Shocking footage has exposed San Francisco’s crippling drug crisis as EMT workers attempt to resuscitate four people who have overdosed on fentanyl.
The video, which has been viewed by thousands on Twitter, shows four people hooked up to lifesaving devices as emergency responders try to save them.
A bystander can be heard counting the number of people who said they appeared to be dying in the street from an apparent drug overdose.
It comes as the city claims to have seen its first significant drop in drug overdose deaths.
Sirens could be heard in the background of the 15-second video, while bystanders seemed indifferent to the scene unfolding before them, some pedestrians simply moving across the street.
Shocking footage has exposed San Francisco’s crippling drug crisis as EMT workers attempt to resuscitate four people who overdosed on fentanyl
The EMT employees seemed adept at performing the life-saving procedures that took place in broad daylight.
The caption reads, “Three (four counted in the video) simultaneous overdoses on the San Francisco sidewalk.”
It then cites new legislation enacted by California Governor Gavin Newsom: “But don’t worry Gavin Newsom is focused on drag queens having the right to perform for children in Tennessee.”
San Francisco is trying to curb its drug problem — and this year has vowed to open 70 residential step-down beds to provide recovery facilities for people leaving residential treatment for addiction problems.
In 2022, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which partners with SFDPH in distributing the medication, alone dispensed more than 40,000 doses of naloxone and reported 5,127 reversals.
The city also trained more than 2,000 people over the past year to teach them how to recognize and respond to an overdose, while handing out more than 40,000 doses of naloxone.
San Francisco promises to open a new crisis stabilization unit in 2024 to provide short-term, urgent care to substance users.
But despite the city’s best efforts, 620 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco by 2022 — 72 percent of them acutely related to fentanyl. In 2021 there were 640.
Fentanyl has killed thousands of Californians in recent years. According to official data, there were 5,622 fentanyl-related fatal overdoses in 2021 – nearly 225 of which were in teenagers less than 15 years old.
In January, a Senate bill was introduced, requiring all K-12 schools to carry an on-site supply of naloxone in the event of a school fentanyl overdose.
The shocking, but perhaps unsurprising, change stems from California’s rampant counterfeiting market.
Placer County in Greater Sacramento saw a 450 percent increase in fentanyl deaths between 2019 and 2021.
And by 2021, half of those fatalities were under the age of 25. Targeting schools with antidotes has therefore become a priority in California.
California’s governor announced the move as part of a $97 million budget to address the opioid and fentanyl crisis Gavin Newsom said: ‘This has the highest priority. There isn’t a parent who doesn’t understand the significance of this fentanyl crisis.”
San Francisco’s Department of Public Health has had to issue urgent warnings in the past after the city experienced a series of fatal overdoses after people were inadvertently exposed to fentanyl while taking cocaine.
A man is seen injecting drugs into his arm. Despite San Francisco’s efforts, 620 people died of drug overdoses by 2022 — 72 percent of them acutely related to fentanyl
Tech executive Michelle Tandler, 37, recently revealed her experience of seeing ‘hundreds’ of people on city streets ‘folded’ after smoking the deadly drug
A man is seen leaning over as a passerby on an e-scooter watches him in San Francisco
And the reality for many locals is that the city has become “dystopian” – where drug users are seen hunched over while taking narcotics in the middle of the day.
Tech executive Michelle Tandler, 37, recently revealed her experience of seeing “hundreds” of people on the street “folded” after smoking the deadly drug.
Tandler said, “Last night I went to a bar in downtown San Francisco. It looked like a dystopia. I saw hundreds of people bent over (probably high on fentanyl), or smoking on the sidewalk.”
Mayor London Breed said at the start of the year: ‘Fentanyl continues to disrupt and destroy lives in our city and although overdoses have fallen, they still remain far too high.’
