When San Francisco Mayor London Breed announcement a crackdown on drugs in the Tenderloin, there was a lot of focus on shifting politics, but not nearly enough on whether the efforts would make things safer for the residents of the city.
The US is in the midst of an overdose crisis with news breaking last week, that over 100,000 Americans died from overdoses over the past year, which is a rate that is ten times higher than it was in 2000.
“Higher rates of overdose among white individuals in the 2000s and 2010s are thought to be linked to their greater access to opioid medications through the healthcare system,” UCLA Professors Joseph Friedman and Helena Hansen write in a recent
Op-Ed in the LA Times. “However, with the Drug Enforcement Administration now heavily cracking down on opioid prescribing, doctors are increasingly hesitant to provide them, and people are turning to the illegal street market for opioids.”
