Fatal fentanyl poisonings among children under the age of 14 have risen over the past few years at a faster rate among that group than any other age demographic, the nonprofit Families Against Fentanyl reports.

The group found that between 2019 and 2021, fentanyl deaths among children nearly quadrupled among those aged 5 to 14, tripled among those aged 1 to 4, and doubled among infants. In many of these instances, the drugs were ingested by the children who were unaware of what they were taking.

The report notes that fentanyl "deaths increased sevenfold in the U.S. regardless of age from 2015 to 2021. Nearly 10x among infants; 15x among children 1 to 14; more than 8x among Americans 35 to 44; and more than 9x among Americans 55 to 74."

The group's founder, Jim Rauh, told Fox News that fentanyl is "so prevalent in society now. Distribution goes to dispersion by entropy. That's the law of physics. And it's showing out because of the mass quantity of this material. ... 

"It's so prevalent that our innocent children, by incidental contact, are being killed. And now it's creeping into the schools and other enclosed environments."

Dr. Wilson Compton of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said in a statement: "Even with those fentanyl test strips that may tell you that there's fentanyl in a product but it won't necessarily tell you how much, so it's people playing Russian roulette with their lives when they take these illegal products."

• 93 Percent: Fentanyl Abuse Is Serious Problem in US
• DEA Seizes Record Amount of Fentanyl in 2022