On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that reported cases of three sexually transmitted diseases in the United States had reached an all-time high in 2017. Rates of gonorrhea rose by 67 percent, syphilis by 76 percent, and chlamydia by 21 percent, to a total of almost 2.3 million cases nationwide. According to the CDC, 2017 surpassed 2016 as the year with the most reported STD cases on record—and marked the fourth year in a row that STDs increased steeply in the U.S. [...]
Often-cited data from the biennial General Social Survey, for example, indicate that the number of Americans who haven’t had sex at all in the past year has risen from 18 percent to 22 percent over the past two decades, while the number of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 who report having sex twice a month or more has declined from almost three-quarters in the early 2000s to two-thirds by 2016. And a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2017, authored by a research team led by Jean Twenge, found that American adults were engaging in sex nine fewer times a year on average than they did in the late 1990s. So if there’s less sex being had nationwide, how are so many more people getting STDs? [...]
Two factors Bolan identifies as potentially contributing to the record-high rates of reported STDs are a rise in condom-less sex and a rise in high-risk sexual behaviors associated with opioid use and addiction. [...]
Additionally, Bolan says, other CDC research suggests a link between STD transmission and the risky sex acts often associated with opioid use and addiction. She cites a soon-to-be-published CDC study that found 15- to 24-year-olds who reported injected drug use in the past year were more likely to be diagnosed with chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea than those who didn’t inject drugs. More importantly, she adds, “injecting drugs was also associated with higher rates of forced sex, sex with people who exchange money or drugs for sex, and sex with other people who inject drugs”—which are all “high-risk factors” for STD transmission. (Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are really only transmitted through sexual activity, not through blood exposure from sharing needles.)
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