Forty-two kilograms of fentanyl were seized by police in Alameda County, California, on December 20, 2022 (AFP)

As the fentanyl crisis continues to wreak havoc on the US west coast, drug-related deaths increased by 41% in San Francisco in the first quarter of this year, with one person dying of an accidental overdose every 10 hours, a new report by The Guardian highlighted.

Two hundred people died of overdoses in the past three months in San Francisco in comparison with 142 in the same months last year, as per reports by the city’s medical examiner.

The homeless were particularly heavily struck; between January and March, overdose deaths among the unhoused were up by two times over the same period last year. Most of the deaths had fentanyl found in them. Minority groups in San Francisco were particularly heavily damaged.

"It’s a crying shame that a city as wealthy as San Francisco can’t get its act together to deal with overdose deaths," said Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of addiction medicine at the University of California San Francisco, as quoted by The Guardian.

Ciccarone further said that the city’s augmentative punitive approach to handling drug users has only intensified their overdose risks.

"We’re a politically divided city between the people who have a lot of money and want the streets swept and those who think a compassionate, science-based, health approach is appropriate," the professor indicated.

Overdose fatalities in the city reached an all-time high in January with 82 deaths, continuing a trend that started in December. This happened soon after the local government tightened security in San Francisco's drug-ridden Tenderloin section and shut down a major outreach facility where drug addicts were using under medical care.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen, a proponent of wellness hubs in San Francisco, pointed out that the city has not developed any fresh strategies to address a "horrific crisis" in the area.

"We closed the Tenderloin Center with no plan in place to replace it," she said.

Ronen added that "fentanyl is corrupting every part of the drug supply and all the social problems that underlie the drug addiction crisis continue – widespread poverty, trauma with no access to mental health care, inequality, and homelessness."

"What did we expect to happen?"