San Francisco Reports Sharp Increase in Fentanyl-Related Deaths

Members of Mothers Against Drug Deaths hold a chain of posters in front of the Tenderloin Linkage Center in San Francisco on Feb. 5, 2022. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

SAN FRANCISCO—Recent data from the San Francisco Medical Examiners’ Office, released on Oct. 17, showed a rapid increase in fentanyl-related overdoses and deaths. Just in September, three out of four drug-related deaths involved fentanyl.

Scott Silverman, an interventionist and CEO of Confidential Recover, said that’s partly due to fentanyl being camouflaged or mixed with many other drugs, such as oxycodone.

“People are taking it, not knowing what it is, and they are accidentally overdosing,” Silverman told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.

According to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opiate drug that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, and it is currently the deadliest drug threat in the nation.

In California, fentanyl-related overdose deaths have been increasing at an unpredictable rate, according to a report by the California Department of Public Health.

According to an Oct. 17 report, San Francisco has reported a total of 451 overdoses so far this year, with 319 involving fentanyl. The city saw 518 fentanyl-related deaths in 2020 and 475 in 2021. Those numbers spiked from the 90 such deaths reported in 2018.

“Fentanyl is something that is actually easy to make, easy to import, and the manufacturers that are putting it together see America as a very big target and a big consumer,” said Silverman. “It’s coming in from a variety of different places, being made in a variety of different places, and also can be purchased on the dark web and manufactured in your garage.”

A quarter of all the overdose deaths so far this year involved the city’s homeless population, with 21 percent of all the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin district.

The Tenderloin Center for the homeless in San Francisco. (Courtesy of the City and County of San Francisco)

In San Francisco, the number of drug-related deaths recorded from January 2020 to October 2022 was higher than the number of COVID-19 deaths in the same time frame, with 1,817 overdose deaths and 1,052 COVID-19 deaths.

“Fentanyl really skyrocketed the last couple of years because the OxyContin that was heavily prescribed across our country pretty much got shut down,” Silverman said.

Recently, the DEA in New York busted a large quantity of fentanyl pills in the shape of Lego blocks. The DEA identified the brightly-colored fentanyl, referred to as rainbow fentanyl, as a new trend in the United States.

According to the CDC, drug poisoning is still the leading killer for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. In 2021 alone, over 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.

Silverman said the increasing trend of fentanyl disguised as candy is a “big concern with Halloween coming up.” He said it is important to protect our children.

“The most important thing we can do is that we can talk about it and reduce this stigma and realize that fentanyl is not a party drug. Fentanyl is a poison,” he said.

Cynthia Cai contributed to this report.