San Francisco suffers a fentanyl attack. Evan Sernoffsky reports
SAN FRANCISCO – As COVID-19 continues to spread in San Francisco, the opioid epidemic is also exploding, raising fears that the global pandemic could lead to more overdose deaths.
Social estating and isolation can help prevent the spread of coronavirus from one user to another, but these techniques are potentially harmful to other people who use drugs.
“We have seen an increase in fatal overdoses, and this is because other people are using it alone and no one can object to that overdose,” said Paul Harkin, who works in harm relief at HealthRIGHT 360 in San Francisco.
Harkin distributes Narcan, the opioid reversal drug Naloxone, and urges anyone who uses drugs to do so with someone else.
San Francisco experienced the number of opioid overdoses last year, in component part of the recent arrival of fentanyl on the market. Fentanyl is 40 times more potent than heroin and can cause a rapid overdose.
The Tenderloin community in San Francisco is at the epicenter of the epidemic. Traders and users come from all domains to the community to sell and buy the hard drug.
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According to knowledge released through the San Francisco Department of Public Health, another 165 people suffered a fatal overdose of fentanyl or other fentanyl-containing drugs in 2018. Last year, that number doubled to 339.
The city’s medical examiner has not yet performed autopsies and toxicology tests in many cases, but experts in 2020 will be even worse.
“Last year we saw a significant increase in overdose deaths in San Francisco and, at this point, we are on track for an even greater increase in overdose deaths,” said Dr. Alex Kral, an epidemiologist who has studied drug use for 3 decades.
He has long advocated for admission sites as a way to prevent death.
San Francisco passed the law to open drinking places, but the city is awaiting the passage of House Bill 362. If the bill passes, the city can begin operating the places next year.
Meanwhile, Kral said the opioid and overdose epidemic “is necessarily exacerbated through existing shelter ordinances. “
The San Francisco Police Department said it sees the same trend, too. The police have canceled more overdoses this year than any last year.
Officers canceled 148 overdoses until July 29, 98 of which were on the network. Five years ago, San Francisco police canceled only three overdoses in the city in the same period.
Many users are too aware of the risks of fentanyl. KTVU visited a network of other people along Willow Street on the edge of the Tenderloin for several days and made sure someone was there to administer Narcan every time they used fentanyl.
“I overdosed after getting two doses, two puffs of aluminum foil and I fell,” Carmen Sierra said.
She said she had been rescued from the breaking point of death three times through her friends and that she herself had stored dozens of other users.
“A lot of my friends who live across the country don’t have those things, which makes their use a hundred times more dangerous,” he said.
Carmen Sierra fentanyl on Willow Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.
The safe haven also disrupted the chain of origin for fentanyl, experts say: users buy from other merchants whose drugs would possibly be more powerful, and others who have been blank may go back to using drugs due to the strain of the pandemic.
The drugs they find on the street have come a long way to get there, they are basically made in China and Mexico.
“There are super labs that create this fentanyl and from there it crosses the border, spreads to the United States and attacks drug addicts,” said Daniel Comeaux, special agent at Drug Tax. Enforcement Administration at the San Francisco box office. “
Outside of his workplace on the streets of Tenderloin, the fentanyl epidemic continues to rage and is most likely due to the coronavirus for a long time.
Evan Sernoffsky is an investigative journalist for KTVU. Send an email to Evan evan. sernoffsky@foxtv. com and him on Twitter – EvanSernoffsky