Accidental drug overdose deaths continue to torment San Francisco, according to data released Tuesday by the city medical examiner’s office.
While June saw the lowest monthly number of overdose deaths this year, 54, in July it climbed back up to 71. With 473 overdose deaths this year, San Francisco is on track to surpass its highest recorded number of overdose deaths in a calendar year 725 in 2020.
We, the undersigned national, state, and local drug policy, criminal legal reform, public health, and advocacy organizations, write to communicate our ardent support of ending criminal penalties for the possession of personal-use amounts of drugs. In 2020, U.S. law enforcement agencies made 1,155,610 arrests for drug law violations–more arrests than for all violent crimes combined. Around 86% of these arrests were for the possession of personal-use amounts of drugs alone and often led to time spent in prison. Yet, we have an abundance of evidence that demonstrates that drug arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration have had no substantial effect on ending problematic drug use or curbing the illegal drug supply in the United States. Rather, these policies have only exacerbated the dangers of drug use and led to poorer health outcomes for people who use drugs, including increasing the likelihood that someone will fatally overdose or die by suicide upon release from prison. Given the emo