Michael Robertson struggled in school almost from the very beginning. But it was in seventh grade, when he started smoking cigarettes and drinking, that school seemed to become nearly unbearable to him. Although youth drug use is in decline overall, youth overdose deaths are on the rise.

“There was always an excuse for why he couldn’t go to school,” said his mother, Danielle Forino. “Every morning, he would say he was too tired or didn’t feel good.”

At 13 years old, he was prescribed Vicodin following dental work and, his mother said, quickly started abusing it. By his sophomore year of high school, in 2017, he couldn’t get through the school day without nicotine, she recalled. By his junior year, he was addicted to oxycodone. His senior year, he enrolled at the district’s alternative schooling program, which allows students more flexibility in their learning, but was kicked out for vaping nicotine. Throughout this time, he fell further behind academically and became disengaged from school, his peers and other activities he previously enjoyed.

Nationwide, there has been a drop in the share of young people using substances such as cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and harder drugs. But in recent years, unintentional youth overdose deaths among children and teens have spiked.

In Robertson’s hometown of Fort Kent, which hugs the Canadian border, educators have seen students arrive at school hungover, fall asleep in class and show up Monday mornings with substance-use-related summonses they received over the weekend, asking what to do. They also see students who skip school, arrive late, can’t focus, are restless and lack drive, issues that they say have worsened in recent years alongside youth overdose deaths.

This August, Fort Kent will use new funding to try a novel solution to the problem: a public boarding school for high schoolers in recovery. Educators hope the school’s focus on abstinence and mental health will help students overcome their substance abuse problems — but first, they have to convince the teens who need help the most and are the hardest to reach that they should enroll, preventing youth overdose deaths.

Read the full article about youth substance use and overdose deaths by Lana Cohen at The Hechinger Report.