evidence: Gaither analyzed pediatric mortality data collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1999 to 2021. The mortality rate from fentanyl soared more than 300 percent during that period, from 0.47 per 100,000 children to 1.92 per 100,000, she found. In 2021, 40 infants and 93 children 1 to 4 years of age died from fentanyl. Opioid deaths in the United States have been rising since the late 1990s, as the drugs were more frequently prescribed. Illicitly manufactured fentanyl has increasingly been found in the illegal drug supply in the last decade. By 2017, more children under age 20 were dying from fentanyl than from other opioids, and those deaths have since spiked, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Fentanyl deaths have also been climbing for adults. More than 70,000 deaths in the United States were due to synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, in 2021, out of over 106,000 drug overdose fatalities reported that year.