California
Fentanyl and heroin deaths double in San Francisco as US sees drop in fatal overdoses
The number of heroin and fentanyl overdose deaths in San Francisco more than doubled in 2019, according to the city’s medical examiner’s office statistics obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle.
Officials said 290 deaths involved fentanyl and heroin last year compared to 134 in 2018. Fentanyl was involved in 234 deaths, up from 90 in 2018.
“We had a feeling through the year that we were seeing more and more deaths, but this is really quite staggering,” Dr. Luke Rodda, chief forensic toxicologist for the medical examiner’s office, told The San Francisco Chronicle.
Drug overdose deaths have declined across the U.S. from 2018 to 2019, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From June 2018 to June 2019, overdose deaths decreased by 0.2%, dropping from 67,942 to 67,165.
Over 770,000 Americans have died from overdoses since 1999 and 2018 was the first time in decades that drug overdose deaths declined, according to the CDC.
Earlier in January, San Francisco passed a resolution declaring a “public health crisis on drug overdoses,” according to the San Francisco Examiner.
The resolution calls on a better response to drug abuse from the Department of Public Health and Mayor London Breed.
“There needs to be so much more done to prevent overdose deaths,” Matt Haney, from the city’s Board of Supervisors, told the San Francisco Examiner. “We expect that the numbers in 2019 will go up even higher than in 2018. The numbers are not regularly shared as often as they need to be for us to understand the extent of the crisis. We are still working from 2018 numbers.”
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