San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year, as fentanyl ravaged the city’s homeless population.
The Californian coastal hub saw 200 people die due to overdoses between January and March, compared to 142 deaths in 2022, according to recent data from the city’s medical examiner.
That amounts to one overdose death every 10 hours in a city that has seen its reputation as a coastal gem ravaged by worsening crime, drugs, and, homelessness rates, even as it remains home to tech billionaires.
The overdose victims were disproportionately black and Latino men, and frequently based in the Tenderloin area, a gritty downtown neighborhood, where a drug treatment center was shuttered in December.Â
Addicts openly smoke drugs on the sidewalk of the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, where overdose deaths have rocketed upwards in recent months
San Francisco saw a staggering 41 percent surge in the number of drug-related deaths in the first quarter of 2023
Those living on the streets were particularly hard hit — with the number of homeless people dying from drug overdoses doubling.
Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that’s frequently trafficked from Mexico and can kill in even tiny quantities, was detected in 159 of the deaths.
The drug is 50-100 times stronger than morphine.
It is cheap, packs down small, is relatively easy to smuggle into the US, and is mixed into pills that then claim the lives of users, who are often unaware they are taking something so powerful.
Methamphetamine and cocaine were also present, although to a lesser extent.
The sharp increase in deaths started in December and continued into a record-breaking January.
This followed the shuttering of the Tenderloin Center, where addicts were allowed to use drugs and where the overdose reversal treatment, Narcan, was available for those who had taken too much.
Narcan nasal spray can reverse opioid overdoses and save livesÂ
Dr Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of addiction medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said it was a ‘crying shame that a city as wealthy as San Francisco can’t get its act together to deal with overdose deaths.’
‘We’re a politically divided city between the people who have a lot of money and want the streets swept and those who think a compassionate, science-based, health approach is appropriate,’ Dr Ciccarone told The Guardian.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed last July replaced the city’s soft-on-crime District Attorney Chesa Boudin with Brooke Jenkins, who vowed to get to grips with the city’s worsening social problems.
Breed in December shuttered the Tenderloin Center, which assisted more than 400 people each day, after complaints from residents who said it drew in drug addicts to the run-down area.
Breed cited the center’s low success rate – only getting less than 1 percent of attendees into drug treatment schemes.
Millennium Health, which processes drug tests nationwide, recently told DailyMail.com that it’s researchers had detected a ninefold rise in fentanyl use in the western US between 2019 and 2022.
Eric Dawson, the group’s vice president, said the powerful opioid has now cast its deadly shadow across the whole country.
Dr Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of addiction medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says San Francisco ‘can’t get its act together to deal with overdose deaths’
A homeless woman smokes crack with two others in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco
This graphic shows the rise in positive urine tests for fentanyl of those receiving drug abuse treatment in different parts of the US. Millennium Health’s data is based on some 4.5 million samples
San Francisco’s reputation as a coastal gem has been left in tatters by worsening crime, drugs, and, homelessness rates, even as it remains home to tech billionaires
The biggest rises were seen along the Pacific coast and mountain regions, which respectively saw 900 percent and 875 percent increases in detections of the powerful synthetic opioid.
‘It’s very scary,’ Dawson told DailyMail.com.
‘Fentanyl has exploded out west, it’s caught up with the rest of the country and the country is now blanketed in fentanyl.’
Scenes of fentanyl-addled mayhem are common on the streets of western cities like San Francisco and Portland, but the research showed how even towns and rural and mountain areas have been badly hit.
The US opioid crisis has been surging for decades, but intensified in the pandemic, when lockdowns and hospital closures left people particularly bored and vulnerable to addiction.
This latest phase of addiction involving fentanyl has been more deadly and difficult to control, due in large part to the potency of the drug.
Fentanyl is commonly mixed with drugs like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, or pressed into pills that resemble other prescription opioids. On the street, it is known as everything from ‘blues’ to China Girl, and Goodfellas.
Tests by the Drug Enforcement Administration show that four in ten pills sold in the US have at least 2mg of fentanyl — the equivalent of about five grains of salt — a dose that is considered potentially lethal.
The agency warns that ‘one pill can kill’.
The Facebook group Lost Voices of Fentanyl has tens of thousands of members who pay tribute to their loved ones who were claimed by the drug.
In Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and other big cities, the sight of homeless people collapsed on sidewalks, puffing fentanyl smoke and lurching from moments of slumber to bouts of violent shivering have become all too common.
The devastation has become so bad that fentanyl flows across the US-Mexico border have become a flashpoint between Democrats and Republicans.
