SAN FRANCISCO – Mike Enright redoed three times in December. He was a long-time heroin user and said he did not know his limit after switching to fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.
“It just hits you so hard,” Mr Enright sat on the sidewalk, not far from the tent where he slept.
Fentanyl has been a long-standing plague on the East Coast and is now leading to a rapid increase in deaths in the Western US.
In the Seattle area, fentanyl overdose deaths in 2020 are 57% higher than the previous year, according to data from the country’s medical examiner. Preliminary data show that deaths from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl rose 162% in the Las Vegas area last year. In Los Angeles County, a recent report blamed fentanyl for a 26% increase in the overdose deaths among the homeless population during the first seven months of 2020.
The problem is particularly acute in San Francisco, where a record 708 people died from drug overdoses in 2020, an increase of 61% from the previous year. By comparison, 254 people died in the city from Covid-19 last year.