3,000 fatal ODs in S.F. put spotlight on drug addiction crisis
Prominent addiction medicine doctors and harm-reduction advocates Tuesday blasted San Francisco’s response to the drug overdose crisis, which they say has claimed twice as many lives as the COVID-19 pandemic, and urged the city to open a supervised drug consumption site like the controversial Tenderloin Center that closed in late 2022.
Since January 2020, 3,026 people have died from accidental drug overdoses in San Francisco — more than double the 1,319 people who have died from COVID, according to city data.
“3,000 deaths is an inconvenient truth because it highlights 3,000 failures in our public policy related to substance use,” said Dr. Dan Ciccarone, a UCSF professor of family and community medicine and addiction researcher. “It highlights that we’re not listening to our public policy experts and our doctors.”
Ciccarone joined leaders of the addiction-treatment provider HealthRight 360, harm-reduction advocates and representatives of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office at a news conference outside the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office.
They called for changes to the city’s approach to the overdose crisis, including lowering barriers to treatment, drug supply checks, and reopening a supervised drug consumption site like the Tenderloin Linkage Center, a temporary location that existed for nine months in 2022 but closed because it did not link enough people to treatment.
Staff at the center reversed 300 overdoses and helped more than 1,000 people get into housing or shelter, but fewer than 1% of visits connected people to mental health or drug treatment.
“The fact that it was closed at nine months is a crying shame,” Ciccarone said.
The supervised consumption model has worked successfully in Zurich and in Melbourne, Australia, he said.
Under Mayor London Breed, San Francisco has deployed a more aggressive law enforcement response to drug use, increasing drug arrests and passing a ballot measure that requires welfare recipients to undergo drug screenings and enroll in treatment as a condition of receiving cash assistance.
Speakers at Tuesday’s news conference say these strategies are not rooted in evidence and do not help people struggling with addiction, citing studies showing that people who use drugs are more likely to overdose shortly after being released from jail because their tolerance drops.
“At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco quickly moved forward, following the science and implementing evidence-based responses instead of falling victim to attempts to politicize it,” said Gary McCoy, vice president of policy at HealthRight 360.
“Because of this, there have been less than half as many COVID-19 deaths in San Francisco than there have been overdose deaths during that same period. Stigma, marginalization and politicization remain a threat to our response to drugs. The escalating responses to substances not grounded in science and research have been shown to exacerbate overdose deaths.”