Last month, San Francisco’s drug issue reached a new low, breaking the city’s previous record for the most fatal drug overdoses in a single month.
According to early city figures, there were 84 unintentional drug overdose deaths in August, or about five deaths every two days.
August’s 83 drug deaths surpassed January’s 83 to become the bloodiest month since San Francisco began collecting monthly overdose deaths in early 2020.
Fentanyl was linked in 66 of the drug deaths last month.
So far this year, 563 people in San Francisco have died as a result of a drug overdose, while the circumstances of over 100 of those deaths are still being investigated.
According to city data, San Francisco is on course to have 845 overdose deaths this year, breaking the city’s previous record of 725 deaths in 2020. Last year, there were 647 fatal overdoses, but they have risen again this year. In 2017, 222 people died from overdoses in the city, a substantially lower amount.
Millions of dollars have been spent by the city to combat addiction and overdoses, including a “safe consumption” site in the Tenderloin neighborhood that operated for roughly 11 months last year. However, the location was shuttered due to worries about how much it was costing taxpayers, complaints from local people about the deterioration of the neighborhood, and its failure to connect many addicts with drug treatment programs.
However, none of the city’s actions have been successful in resolving the situation.
Even drug users are dissatisfied with the scenario.
“It’s crazy, so sad out here, it’s like a zombie apocalypse,” Georgia Taylor, 32, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Taylor said she started using fentanyl “because I lost my two kids to child protective services and had a broken heart.”
“You can’t help people who don’t want help,” Taylor told the outlet. “You can find 100 people out here who have 100 different reasons for using, and we all have to be ready to quit before it will work. I’ve been clean before, and I so, so want to get clean again before I overdose and die. But it’s so hard.”
In addition to the continuous issue of fentanyl on San Francisco’s streets, a new narcotic is flooding the illegal drug market and producing problems for the city.
Xylazine, sometimes known as “tranq” on the street, is a cheap, flesh-rotting horse tranquilizer mass-produced in China that has recently flourished on the streets of San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York. The “zombie drug” creates skin sores that resemble flesh being eaten away, sometimes down to the bone, and can cause a person’s heart and respiration to slow to a halt, leaving users catatonic or dead.
Narcan, an opioid-reversal medication, does not act on “tranq” since xylazine is not an opioid.
For years, San Francisco’s drug issue has been accompanied by rampant homelessness and criminality.
Since before the pandemic, homelessness has only gotten worse. On any given night, over 38,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area, a 35% increase since 2019.
According to police data, overall crime in San Francisco is down this year, but particular forms of violent crime are up.
Murder is up 11% this year to 40 murders. So far, there have been 1,989 robberies, a 17% increase. Car thefts have increased 11% to 4,898 thefts.
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