Fentanyl Epidemic
In 2023, 806 people died in San Francisco from overdoses, most of them from fentanyl. This is an all-time high, never before has a drug killed so many people in this city of less than one million inhabitants. The city´s mayor, London Breed, declared state of emergency in 2021 due to the escalation to fentanyl overdose deaths. She requested assistance from the State of California and the federal Government in the fight against drug trafficting on its streets. Since then, the Highway Patrol and National Guard troops have been collaborating with San Francisco Police. In Filadefia, 1,276 people died from overdoses. One on each side of the country, these are the two cities in the United States with the highest number of overdose deaths. In the case of the one on the east coast, almost all the fentanyl activity takes place in the Kensington neighborhood, whose main avenue runs under a metal bridge over which a train runs every 5 minutes and silences everything. Fentanyl kills more than 70.000 people each year in the United States. There are already more deaths from this drug that the Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan wars combined.