SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – While fatal drug overdoses have declined in San Francisco for the first time in three years, the issue is still rampant in the city.
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While overdoses dropped by 11% last year, overdoses are still more than 40% higher now than they were in 2019.
"Open-air drug markets are disrupting neighborhoods and residents," said Mayor London Breed. "In fact, we've had more overdose deaths since the start of a global pandemic than we did COVID-19 deaths."
Three-quarters of those deaths were due to fentanyl. San Francisco had the highest overdose death rate of any large county in the state with most cases happening in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods.
These numbers, just released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health also shows the need to focus prevention programs.
Particularly for Black residents, as that group has more than five times the overdose death than that of the city overall.
In the meantime, the city is expanding the availability of Naloxone, the drug that reverses overdoses. In 2021 there were nearly 9,500 overdose reversals, double from the year before.
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