{"doi":"10.1111/papr.70057","title":"US Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ Sources for Prescription Opioid Misuse: Age, Substance Use, and Mental Health Differences","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Medication sources for prescription opioid misuse in US adolescents and young adults may have changed, particularly related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined how opioid sources vary across age groups and cohorts and whether links between sources and substance use or mental health vary between age groups. METHODS: Cross sectional nationally representative survey data from the 2015-2019 and 2021-2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health were used. Respondents were interviewed in their homes (2015-19) or via mixed household and web-based survey methods (2021-2022). Participants were 6045 14-25-year-old reporting past-year prescription opioid misuse. Mutually exclusive opioid sources were physicians, purchases, theft, and friends/family for free. Cross-tabulations estimated source prevalence by age, and logistic and negative binomial regression models evaluated links between sources (independent variable) and substance use, mental health, and sociodemographics (individual dependent variables). RESULTS: Theft declined significantly with age in the 2015-2019 cohort (12.4% to 4.7%), with some evidence of opioid source differences between 2015-2019 and 2021-2022. Those using purchases had the most past-month prescription opioid misuse days and the highest prevalence of substance use disorder from misuse (e.g., 23.4% of 2015-2019 young adults), other substance use, and mental health concerns; those using theft typically had the second highest rates, with the lowest rates often in the physician source group. CONCLUSION: We found age- and cohort-based differences in sources, and mechanisms underlying these differences warrant further study. Adolescents and young adults using purchases or theft to obtain opioids are important targets for identification and intervention.","journal":"Pain Practice","year":2025,"id":544904,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.5531,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":455104,"name":"Brady T. West","orcid":"0000-0003-0160-1388","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":475274,"name":"Jason A. Ford","orcid":"0000-0003-0070-5062","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":336819,"name":"Philip Veliz","orcid":"0000-0003-2544-3468","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":324103,"name":"Rebecca J. Evans-Polce","orcid":"0000-0002-9622-4652","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":475273,"name":"Ty S. Schepis","orcid":"0000-0003-3655-0496","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":38,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:17.418915Z","pmid":"40542613","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}