San Francisco – After having increased during the pandemic coded in an emergency of overwhelming public health, deaths by drug overdose in San Francisco fell in 2024, according to preliminary data compiled by the city's health officials.
The office of the chief medical examiner recorded 586 fatal overdoses in San Francisco in the first 11 months of 2024. This represents almost a 23% decreaseOr 174 less deaths, compared to the first 11 months of 2023. In total, 810 people died of drug overdoses in 2023, the greatest number in the city archives.
Development reflects national data and on a state scale showing death by overdose on the decline. The provisional data of federal centers for the control and prevention of diseases indicate a 14.3% decrease In fatal overdoses through California during the comparison of the 12 months which ended in July 2023 with the 12 months which ended in July 2024. Deadly overdoses dropped by 16.9% on a national scale during this period, according to CDC figures.
Los Angeles County health officials have not yet published fatal figures for 2024. But the most recent data has also shown progress: deaths due to drug overdoses and poisoning plate Between 2022 and 2023, after years of historical increase, according to the Department of Public Health of the County of Los Angeles. In 2023, the county recorded 3,092 fatal overdoses, slightly down 3,220 deaths the previous year.
San Francisco's public health experts have awarded the decline of the deadly consumption of drugs in the city to the generalized naloxone availability, a drug commonly sold under the narcan brand which can quickly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, as well as buprenorphine and methadone, prescription drugs that deal with dependence on long -term opiidae.
“We are carefully optimistic that our public health interventions are starting to see the results in terms of life safeguard,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Methadone prescriptions issued by the health service increased by more than 30% and buprenorphine prescriptions by almost 50% in the past year, said Colfax. The department has recently been part of a “night browser team” which operates after nightfall to offer treatment, including a TV program This quickly connects people who abuse opioids to health care providers who can prescribe drugs. The ministry has recorded more than 2,300 calls since the launch of the program in March.
San Francisco has added around 400 residential processing beds to 2,200 places existing in recent years and tripled the number of street care workers in the past two years, according to the Public Health Office and the London mayor's office.
Dr. Christopher Colwell, Head of Emergency Medicine of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, said that he had seen a notable increase in the number of people open to the acceptance of treatment in the past year.
“I think that many patients recognize, even more in the past year I have never seen, how dangerous opioid is, looking at their friends and colleagues,” said Colwell. “I have seen much more will to have at least this discussion and to consider it, than I did even a few years ago.”
Keith Humphreys, professor of psychiatry at the University of Stanford who studies dependence, described the figures of 2024 “big problem”.
“Both due to the saved life, but also for the morale of each front -line worker, each worker to reduce harms, each treatment professional, each police officer who desperate that it will never improve,” said Humphreys. “It's a big boost.”
San Francisco, like many urban areas, recorded a sharp increase in fatal overdoses in the first years of the cocovated pandemic, when government stops made it more difficult to deal directly with the introduction of fentanyl into the street drug scene. For example, San Francisco counted 259 deadly overdoses in 2018, when fentanyl hit the streets for the first time, and 441 deaths in 2019. A year later, while the city actually closed to slow down the propagation of Covid-19 and it has become more difficult to make the community of the community, deaths by overdose are soaring more than 720.
Humphreys said that the decay of the pandemic also facilitated the fight against some of the social factors underlying dependence.
“Everything about Covid was terrible from a drug point of view. You had more reasons to use drugs: sadness, isolation, mourning, loneliness,” said Humphreys. “The type of structures that help people get and stay in recovery, such as work, responsibility, daily routines, social obligations, all have dropped.”
Breed has lost its re -election offer from November to the non -profit executive and Levi Strauss Heir Daniel LurieA result widely attributed to the frustration of voters on homelessness and street drugs. However, Breed said that the recent drop in overdose death testifies to his administration's decision to take a “more difficult position” against illicit drug consumption, the dealership stop and the treatment of certain users.
Last March, for example, she sponsored a successful voting measure to demand Detecting and treatment of medication For people who benefit from social benefits from the county who are suspected of unlawful drug consumption.
Colwell said that although last year's figures are a positive sign, the use of opioids remains a serious problem. He highlighted the importance of adding treatment options such as buprenorphine and methadone, which are more effective in the long term than inversion drugs on overdose. And although he appreciates the efforts of the city to invest in processing beds and accommodation, he said: “I don't go a day when I don't feel like I need more.”
He and other experts said it was crucial that the city and Lurie continue to invest in solutions, even if San Francisco faces a planned budget deficit of $ 876 million. Lurie is committed to declaring a Emergency of fentanyl When he takes office on January 8 and “to become hard” on drug traffickers.
“We have seen what can be useful,” said Colwell, “and we have to continue doing this.”
