While the pandemic raged on for the last two years, San Francisco health officials have been tracking another crisis unfolding in the city – drug overdoses.
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And now, a spate of new deaths have officials worried as people looking for other drugs, like cocaine, have been getting exposed to the deadly opioid fentanyl instead.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health issued an alert on Thursday, raising the alarm about this new unsettling trend.
"Within the past two weeks, SFDPH has become aware of three fatal and nine non-fatal fentanyl overdoses among persons in San Francisco who reportedly intended to only use cocaine," said the statement. The three fatal overdoses happened in the Mission District a couple of weeks ago.
Fentanyl is responsible for about 90% of the overdose deaths in the city, according to Dr. Phillip Coffin, Director of Substance Use Research at the SFDPH. Last year, a total of 474 deaths were caused by fentanyl.
"Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than heroin," he said. "And that means people can overdose on it really, really easily."
Recent overdoses have Coffin concerned, as people who believed they were buying cocaine wound up exposed to fentanyl. Fentanyl sold in San Francisco can have a white, powdery appearance, which looks similar to cocaine. It can also look like other drugs, like crack rocks or methamphetamine.
Fentanyl's potency isn't the only thing that makes it more dangerous. A typical heroin overdose can take up to 30 minutes to take effect, but with fentanyl, it hits much faster.
"With a fentanyl overdose, it's probably about five to 15 minutes," he said. "So there’s a much smaller window for a bystander to help."
The best thing to do, if people are going to take non-prescription drugs, is to stagger use with other people so, "everyone's not using at the same time, but there’s always somebody alert and able to respond in the event of unexpected emergency."
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