Natalie Laub, a physician at Rady Children’s Hospital who is board certified in pediatrics and child abuse says that there’s been an increase in the number of children testing positive for fentanyl.“From 2018 to 2022, there was a 1,600 percent increase in the number of children under the age of 5 who have tested positive for fentanyl at Rady Children’s,” says Laub. “Back in 2018, we were only seeing three to four fentanyl ingestions a year in young children. In 2022, that number was 88 ingestions, and the average age of a child from that group who has ingested fentanyl is 2. While the number 88 may not seem that high, you must remember the number should be zero.”

One of the causes for the increase in fentanyl exposure to children is its explosion on the drug scene over the past five years. Nate Moellering, a community outreach coordinator at Allendale Treatment and Fort Wayne Recovery says that fentanyl has become the most prevalent opioid on the street. “There’s very little heroin in the streets now, even if people think they’re purchasing another opioid, 9 out of 10 times it’s going to be fentanyl or have fentanyl-laced in,” says Moellering. “I don’t remember the last time someone came into our detox facility and failed a drug test due to heroin.”

Due to its prevalence as a top street drug, fentanyl has quickly become one of the most commonly used opioids. This, along with its appearance, has caused more young children to become exposed to it.  “If you’re living in a one-bedroom apartment and crushing up pills in the bedroom or living room and snorting them, there’s going to be little bits of powder that look like glitter left behind,” says Moellering.  “Young children naturally want to touch everything and put things in their mouths out of curiosity. Because of this, they’re going to unknowingly ingest tiny bits of fentanyl and over time, they can build up a tolerance to it.”

While more studies need to be done on how this will impact children in the long run, Moellering says that it could be setting them up for a life of addiction. “When children are coming into the emergency room and testing positive for fentanyl, we don’t know if this is the first, fifth, or hundredth time they’ve been exposed,” says Moellering. “Their brains aren’t fully developed and it’s not meant to handle substances like fentanyl. Their brain chemistry is thrown into chaos and this could have a developmental impact on them socially, emotionally and physically; and set them up for a lifetime full of substance use struggles.” 

Laub says that she’s concerned that as long as fentanyl use continues to be prevalent among adults, more children are going to continue ingesting the substance. “As part of our study, we decided to look more closely at a group of children identified as drug-endangered children who had no symptoms of opioid ingestion,” says Laub. “There was a group of 40 children in San Diego County known to be in the presence of adults using fentanyl or near another child in a home who tested positive for fentanyl. Seventy-three percent of the children in this group tested positive for fentanyl. Let that sink in. Nearly three out of four of these children tested positive for fentanyl but looked normal. They were playing, laughing and breathing.”