In San Francisco, one person dies of an accidental overdose every 10 hours
17 points by Equiet 2 years ago | 15 comments- proc0 2 years ago> “We’ve spent the last 50 years trying to arrest our way out of this and it’s clearly not working. The conditions on the streets are getting worse, the drugs are becoming more dangerous and the health of the community is much, much worse with increased policing.”
So it clearly hasn't worked, but now it's getting worse. Maybe thinking police was meant to solve the problem is the wrong perspective. Regardless of initial motives for using police this way, maybe police was just preventing the problem from getting bigger. Now that those "barriers" are down, there is effectively no downside for trying out that lifestyle. I'm just saying there is a hidden factor at the root of the issue, which the state has not been able to find yet. At this point I'm wondering what if this problem is a societal problem that can only be fixed by the people and not the state.
- Lacerda69 2 years agoYes the problem is illegality. As long as mafia can make trillions of this shit nothing will get better.
The solution is not more police.
>no downside for trying out that lifestyle
Is that a joke? you know that the average addict "lifestyle" is literally hell
- proc0 2 years agoI'm not talking about the side effects of the drug, just the obstacles and risks associated with going after that kind of life. I'm also not saying the obstacles are good, but rather that we should be a little more careful in removing them without a clear picture of what to do next.
- realjhol 2 years agoOK... so you have no solution then. Maybe sit down an let someone else try to fix this mess.
- Lacerda69 2 years agothe solution is legalisation if that was not clear from my post.
- Lacerda69 2 years ago
- proc0 2 years ago
- aeternum 2 years agoIt's worth looking at what has worked in other countries, and there seem to be two solutions:
1) Go the Singapore/China route and make the penalty for both use and dealing extremely harsh. Often execution.
2) Go the Canada/Nordic country route and implement free injection clinics. Undercut the dealers with safe free or low cost drugs in return for counseling.
The evidence seems to suggest that DEA type enforcement where you simply seize drugs and lock up the dealers for 10-20 years is completely ineffective. It's like running a lottery where there's an immense payout, but also a small chance of going to prison for awhile. People are still going to play.
- proc0 2 years agoI'm definitely on #2, although it should be clear that abusing the substances should have consequences of some kind to serve a deterrent. Not sure how that looks but protecting people from falling into addiction is necessary because after addiction it's hard to help someone who seemingly wants to continue on an obviously destructive path. Maybe alcohol addiction could be first since it's already legal.
- rswskg 2 years agoSingapore has a tiny border to police.
China is...well, China.
- proc0 2 years ago
- Lacerda69 2 years ago
- DoreenMichele 2 years agoThose living on the streets were particularly hard hit – with twice as many unhoused people dying of overdoses between January and March compared to a year earlier.
Fentanyl was detected in most of the deaths. The city’s minority populations were particularly hard hit. A third of the overdose victims were Black, despite Black people making up only 5% of the city’s population.
1. So the nation as a whole needs to work on resolving the affordable housing crisis.
2. Maybe they could try taking a medical approach and see if the drugs are de facto self medicating for a particular issue or if specific health issues make death by overdose more likely.
- nradov 2 years agoMany fentanyl deaths are more like accidental poisonings than the heroin overdoses we used to see years ago. Mexican drug cartels are manufacturing counterfeit prescription drugs such as Xanax and replacing the active ingredient with fentanyl. They have bad quality control and sometimes the dosage is way too high. People get what they think is a sleeping pill or something relatively harmless from a friend and it kills them.
https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/
We should absolutely address the housing crisis, but I'm skeptical whether that would do much to prevent fentanyl poisoning. It's not just homeless people who are dying.
- DoreenMichele 2 years agoHomelessness is a known risk factor for dying of an overdose. They even describe a factor for how and why they think that's true:
"When people don’t have a safe place to go, when they’re using in doorways and public places and they’re afraid of getting caught and put in jail, they tend to rush and use more substance," he said. "And when they rush, there’s a higher risk of overdose."
- DoreenMichele 2 years ago
- nradov 2 years ago
- ihatepython 2 years agoIs that a lot?
- kurthr 2 years agoIt's almot 1000 a year. There's probably <10k homeless and 2-3k addicts on the street. Total addict population is significantly larger, but it still seems like a significant fraction of the total. I'm not sure I buy the article's claim that most of this is happening on the street since the growth of SROs (and closing of the overdose center) seem to provide privacy that allows more overdoses, but the boom in fentanyl (now tranq) seems to keep coming.
I'm not sure there are simple solutions to this that don't have side effects. Mostly, the goal seems to be to move it out of sight, and to be fair many of the people came to SF on bus tickets provided by other localities with the same goal. At the same time there's a level of permission in some areas that doesn't seem to change (kind of like the smash and grabs in all the tourist areas) what ever they say about law and order.
It's not like police have been motivated to do much about it for at least the last 30 years.
- porcoda 2 years agoIt’s a bit above the National average according to:
https://drugabusestatistics.org/drug-overdose-deaths/
Assuming 900000 people in San Francisco, the national average would say about 190/yr. One every 10hrs would mean 876/yr, or 4.6x the national average.
- kurthr 2 years ago
- timcavel 2 years ago[dead]
- realjhol 2 years ago[flagged]