Analysis by Terry Gotham
But until recently, politicians dismissed the idea of a safe-injection site as being too controversial. More controversial than people dying in libraries and babies picking up needles on the beach? Please. San Francisco has essentially become one big unsafe injection site.
~Heather Knight, SF Chronicle “Safe injection sites offer hope in scourge of discarded syringes”
I wasn’t sure how to start this piece, a feeling I think mirrors the paralysis many policymakers feel when it comes to moving away from puritanical, expensive & needlessly harmful criminalization of controlled substances. In the case of the city policymakers, the opioid overdose epidemic has gotten so bad, they may be getting over it. The SF Department of Public Works collected 13,333 syringes in San Francisco. In March. That’s 430 a day. In Ohio, there were 100 accidental drug overdoses in Mongomery County, Ohio in January & February alone, with an average age of 40. Here’s the kicker, 99 tested positive for fentanyl, and, 56% tested positive for acryl-fentanyl, 3 carfentanil cases, and 24 total fentanyl analogs and metabolites were found in total. 24. The majority of the cases tested positive for more than one “fentalog.” But of course, straight from the report:
All acryl fentanyl and furanyl fentanyl cases also tested positive for fentanyl; about 45% of acryl fentanyl cases also tested positive for furanyl fentanyl.
~Research Update on Fentanyl Outbreaks in the Dayton, OH Area: Acryl Fentanyl & Furanyl Fentanyl Commonly Found in Overdose Death Cases.