Fentanyl Spikes Overdose Death in San Francisco | Society

Another epidemic is strongly resurfacing in San Francisco. The California City General Hospital reported Thursday that this was the first day without treatment for coronavirus patients since March 2020. A milestone in an entity that begins to emerge at the end of the tunnel of the health crisis, which left 546 people deceased in the county. As she subsides, another emergency that had been eclipsed last year calls for attention. In the first four months of 2021, 252 people died from overdoses. The figure exceeds the record for the same period of 2020, a year that set the record for deaths with more than 700. The potent fentanyl is present in 72% of deaths.

The synthetic opiate, which is up to 100 times more potent and addicting than morphine, has become the biggest offender in San Francisco. The substance, which is used to treat severe pain caused by cancer, is shipped from Asia through Mexican cartel logistics routes to the United States. It is the most common drug among bodies examined by forensics, with at least 182 of the 252 deaths. This is followed by methamphetamines. Cocaine is a distant third, according to official figures released this week by the city’s medical authorities, which indicate there are deaths where all of these drugs have been combined into a deadly cocktail. Overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids have been relegated to the aforementioned drugs. Twenty years ago, heroin was the leading cause of overdose death.

April was the month with the fewest deaths to date in 2021. The year began with 75 deaths, a number that raised all alarms as it represented a 97% increase over the same month in 2020. The authorities’ concern is that the current year is turning out to be the deadliest year for accidental overdoses. The 252, a provisional figure for the first four months, is already more than the total number of documented deaths in 2017 and close to that of 2018.

The emergence of fentanyl in the bay drug market has left a trail of destruction, as has happened in other urban areas heavily affected by this chemical in the United States. The 2019 numbers clearly reflect the arrival of fentanyl in the city. At that time, when authorities began to detect her on the streets, deaths doubled from previous years. In 2017, for example, the drug was only in 16% of cases investigated by forensic science. The peak of the crisis came in 2020, the same year as the coronavirus pandemic. Substance abuse killed 712 people last year. If 2021 follows the marked trend, it will easily exceed the bar, exceeding 750 victims.

87% of the victims are men, mostly white and between the ages of 35 and 64. Blacks and Latinos represent 43% of those affected. Authorities have decreed that 71% of people who have died of overdoses have a home, a significant fact in a city that has suffered a sharp increase in the homeless population thanks to the pandemic. The figure is similar to last year.

One of the main concerns during the fall of the Donald Trump administration was fentanyl trafficking. The issue was discussed by US Attorney General William Barr at a summit with his Mexican counterparts in January 2020. Barr had asked the US Congress to classify the drug as illegal before “illegal labs in China and Mexico flood the world. country of a legal poison ”. . The pandemic, however, disrupted joint efforts. Today the ghost threatens again. One crisis follows another that is not yet over.

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