San Francisco’s overdose deaths are so bad that Gavin Newsom is sending in the National Guard
Zachary Faria
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How bad have things become in San Francisco? So bad that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is sending in the troops.
Newsom has directed the National Guard and the California Highway Patrol to aid the city in addressing fentanyl tracking.
SAN FRANCISCO IS STUCK IN A DOOM LOOP
Since 2020, San Francisco has officially counted 2,212 accidental overdose deaths, with fentanyl responsible for over 70% of them. This year is on track to be the worst yet, with the city counting 200 overdose deaths over the first three months of 2023. That puts San Francisco on pace for 800 overdose deaths, more than the 725 the city saw in 2020.
As it turns out, San Francisco’s bold strategy of encouraging people to fall deeper into drug addiction and allowing open-air drug markets to operate with impunity is not effective. Who could have guessed?
Many in California are still in denial over the sorry state of San Francisco. Los Angeles Times columnist Anita Chabria said that talking about drugs and crime in San Francisco is entirely “right-wing propaganda that’s stoking paranoia and panic in various parts of the country.” Of course, she also admits that there is a “crisis of addiction” which “has led to unacceptable levels of property crime” and that “brazen” “anti-Asian hate crimes” have surged throughout the city.
Newsom did the same, even as he announced that San Francisco needed the aid of the National Guard and the CHP. He used the opportunity to boast that San Francisco had a lower violent crime rate than Jacksonville, Florida, and Fort Worth, Texas, which are “comparably sized.” (Fort Worth actually has 110,000 more people than San Francisco, and Jacksonville has 140,000 more).
Of course, what those two cities don’t have is a “comparable” epidemic of overdose deaths. San Francisco had the second-highest overdose rate and the second-highest fentanyl death rate in 2020. This year’s rate is on track to be even worse. You would think Newsom would realize that announcing that you are sending the National Guard to a city to address overdose deaths is not the time to try and take a victory lap.
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But the attitude of Newsom (and Chabria) is precisely what has gotten San Francisco into this hole. While the city focused on decriminalization and refusing to prosecute anything, Democrats focused on attacking Republicans. They couldn’t (and can’t) admit that anything is wrong in San Francisco because there are no Republicans there to blame. So Newsom and others stuck their heads in the sand, and thousands overdosed and died.
This should be the wake-up call for San Francisco’s leaders to realize that the health and safety of their own residents are more important than trying to play national politics. But given that Newsom, a former mayor of the city, couldn’t even make the announcement without attacking Texas and Florida, you shouldn’t hold your breath.