A Way Out of the Overdose Crisis

The audio for this article is only available in Spanish.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the overdose death epidemic has begun to decline in the United States from 2018 to the present. In 2022, approximately 111,000 overdose deaths were reported, compared to just over 107,000 in 2023.

The Department of Public Health of San Francisco, California, recorded 806 overdose deaths in the city in 2023, up from 647 deaths in 2022, primarily due to fentanyl.

In the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area, 385,000 people aged 12 or older were classified as having a substance use disorder in the past year, a rate 10.8 percent higher than the national average, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

In that area, an annual average of 782,000 people aged 12 or older used an illicit drug in the past year, representing more than one in five (21.9%) in that population. This figure is higher than the rates for all of California (16.8%) and the national rate (14.7%).

Additionally, San Francisco’s drug crisis has worsened rapidly, with 2023 becoming the deadliest year for the city in terms of drug overdoses, amid a national rise in fentanyl overdoses.

To address this overdose crisis, and as the culminating part of our special radio series, “Bridging the Gap,” in collaboration with the Brava Theater in the Mission District, Radio Bilingüe is hosting a community forum in the heart of San Francisco. The forum will feature families of drug addiction survivors, frontline workers who are helping to save lives, and concerned public health officials tackling this crisis.

What is behind this new drug overdose crisis? What has been done to invest in pharmacological treatment in the most affected areas? What new approaches are being tested to reduce harm?

This one-hour community forum, sponsored by Radio Bilingüe and Brava Theater, will be hosted in Spanish by Chelis López, host of Línea Abierta, and will take place for free before a live audience at the Brava Theater next Friday, June 7, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. (Pacific Time).

Don’t miss it.

Explore more articles and episodes of this series on our Bridging the Gap page.