Teen Brains Are More Vulnerable to Fentanyl and Opioid Addiction - ‘These drugs are killing our kids’

Cameron Shaver died of an overdose                                                      Photo supplied by Sandi Shaver

According to news.nationalpost.  At 23, Cameron Shaver seemed to be on track for success with a landscaping business, a new car, and he was thinking about heading back to school to take culinary arts.

The jack-of-all-trades from Winnipeg was an inspiration to his friends. He’d come a long way from his earlier teen years, when he had struggled with drug addiction. Back then, it was ecstasy.

Cameron had been clean for years when, last September, his mother Sandi received the phone call that no mother should get. Cameron had died of a fentanyl overdose.

Cameron Shaver was 23-years old when he died      Photo supplied by Sandi Shaver

“That’s not how his life was supposed to go,” she said. “You aren’t supposed to bury your child. How do these dealers not know these drugs are killing our kids?”

Fentanyl is a parent’s worst nightmare. The opioid crisis in Canada is not just a street problem  kids from seemingly good homes homes are overdosing in Starbucks bathrooms and ending up in hospital emergency rooms.


This past Valentine’s Day, 14-year-old Chloe Kotval died from a fentanyl overdose in Ottawa. And last month, the B.C. coroner’s office found that the August death of 16-year-old Gwyn Kenny-Staddon in a Starbucks bathroom in Port Moody was from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl.

Last November, the Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that youth aged 15 to 24 experienced a 62 per cent increase in hospitalizations for opioid use since 2007. This represents the fastest increase of any age group.

And a new report out this week from the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network says fentanyl-related deaths in all age groups in the province has increased 548 per cent between 2006 to 2015.

Ten per cent of Ontario students in Grades 7-12 self-reported using a prescription opioid for non-medical reasons at least once during the previous year, according to a 2015 report from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Four per cent reported using these drugs six times or more in the past year.

The numbers could be underestimated, according to the study’s authors. Unlike alcohol or marijuana, it is harder for teachers and parents to detect opioid use, “so we are relying more heavily on self-report,” said Robert Mann, the study’s co-author. While the 2015 version of the study did not ask specifically about fentanyl, this year’s survey, currently underway, will.

In British Columbia the statistics are especially harsh: there were 12 overdose deaths from illicit drugs among 14-18 year olds in 2016, according to the B.C. Coroners Service  half of them were confirmed fentanyl-related. Final testing could confirm more. There have been two more overdose deaths in that age group as of March 31 this year.

Rashmi Chadha, an addictions physician with Vancouver Coastal Health, said some young people start using opioids for pain, but they can quickly become dependent on them.

“Many of the young adults that I see are actively seeking fentanyl over heroin. One 17-year-old girl had received a large dispense of oxycodone from her surgeon for pain following cosmetic surgery,” Chadha said. “She began refilling it every two weeks, saying she had ongoing pain, but confided that she was really using it for sleep and to share with her friends to get high. She was cut off by her doctor after about a month, then developed opioid withdrawal and ended up buying it on the street.

“Over time oxycodone became too expensive so she turned to cheaper heroin and fentanyl,” Chadha said.

Source: news.nationalpost