SAN FRANCISCO — The California Highway Patrol seized enough fentanyl in a recent San Francisco operation to kill everyone in the city three times over, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday. The fentanyl seizure resulted from a public safety partnership the state launched with the city in May to combat fentanyl trafficking using a multi-agency task force.
Working with the California National Guard, the CHP seized 4.2 kilos of fentanyl in the city’s Tenderloin district downtown and the immediate surrounding area over the last six weeks. The amount was enough to kill 2.1 million people, the governor’s office said in a statement. San Francisco’s population is 815,000.
Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and is lethal with a dose of just 2 milligrams.
As part of the state operation, 92 people were arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges, including many related to fentanyl possession.
“These early results show promise and serve as a call to action,” Newsom said in a statement. “We must do more to clean up San Francisco’s streets, help those struggling with substance use and eradicate fentanyl from our neighborhoods.”
Drug-related deaths in San Francisco were up 41% in the first quarter of 2023 compared with a year earlier, according to the city’s medical examiner. One person dies of an accidental overdose every 10 hours. About twice as many people experiencing homelessness died of overdoses between January and March compared with the same period in 2022. Fentanyl was detected in most of the deaths.
Nationally, almost 72,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses and drug poisonings involving synthetic opioids like fentanyl in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fentanyl, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency administrator Anne Milgram, “is the single deadliest drug threat our nation has ever encountered” and is responsible for more deaths of Americans under the age of 50 than heart disease, cancer, homicide or suicide.
