One Hundred Days, Fifty Percent More Deaths
Mayor Daniel Lurie has been in office for a little over 100 days, and in that time, fentanyl overdose deaths have increased by a whopping 50 percent. This indicates a colossal failure in Lurie’s Reagan-esque War on Drugs approach to the people of San Francisco suffering from addiction. There is evidence that being tough on drug use leads to an increase in overdose deaths, while there is also evidence that harm reduction policies reduce overdose deaths. Lurie and his anti-harm reduction supporters are being willfully ignorant of the science behind harm reduction while using substance use to fearmonger and justify more police in our city.
What Lurie should be doing is endorsing and promoting the usage of the Four Pillars strategy for addressing substance use. The Four Pillars strategy is scientifically backed, and if embraced, could do wonders for the public health crisis of substance use in San Francisco. Harm reduction saves lives, and if Mayor Lurie continues to shun harm reduction policies, more blood will be on his hands. Arrest-first approaches to substance use have never, and will never work.
Fentanyl deaths up 50 percent in three months; why isn’t this a big news story?
By Tim Redmond | 48hills | May 11th, 2025