At the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office, the bodies just keep coming. Roughly two every day. Each one requires yet another autopsy and yet another call to a devastated family with the same terrible message: Your loved one died of a drug overdose.
Anybody who dies of a homicide, suicide, accident or alone with no doctor’s sign-off on the cause of death winds up at the city morgue. Now, nearly half of those bodies are there because of an accidental drug overdose.
Fentanyl, an incredibly dangerous and potent drug, is driving the rise in deaths. Of the 468 people who died of overdoses through August, 319 had fentanyl in their systems. Other drugs are often laced with it, and many of those who died probably didn’t even know they consumed it.
What underlies the apparent dsire for so many in San Francisco to turn to injecting drugs? It seems that unless that question can be resolved, no interventions or resuscitation measures stand a chance of success.
