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SF Wants to Charge Drug Dealers With Homicide — But Could It Lead to More Overdose Deaths?

Law enforcement agencies want harsher punishments for drug dealers, but critics say it could stop people from calling for help when there are overdoses.
Sydney Johnson
Two U.S. agents stand behind a police tape line in an alley
San Francisco has announced a plan to charge some drug dealers with homicide. It comes on the heels of an increase in enforcement, working with federal agencies. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Starting next year, drug dealers in San Francisco could be charged with murder if the opioids they sell lead to overdoses—but some experts say that plan could instead lead to more deaths.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Friday morning that law enforcement officials in California and San Francisco will investigate drug overdose deaths as homicides beginning in 2024.

The plan aims to deter drug dealing and hold suppliers accountable for overdose deaths. But many public health and criminal justice advocates are concerned it will, instead, lead to an increase in the already high number of overdose deaths. They say this latest effort to crack down on drug dealing could further worsen San Francisco’s drug overdose crisis by creating more chaotic conditions in the drug trade and deterring people from calling 9-1-1 when help is needed.

“It’s more of the same failed policy and regressive War on Drugs. This latest announcement threatens homicide prosecutions, but will only further increase, unfortunately, overdose deaths,” Angela Chan, assistant chief attorney at San Francisco’s public defender’s office, told KQED.

“It’s going to deter people from calling 9-1-1 and getting an ambulance, getting doctors and help to this,” Chan said. It’s not uncommon for people to use drugs with their supplier, who could be a friend or even a family member. “People who are overdosing need immediate emergency care, and every second matters.”

Breed and Newsom’s plan is to combine personnel from the San Francisco Police Department, the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, the California Highway Patrol and the California National Guard to jointly investigate opioid deaths in San Francisco similar to homicide cases and to pursue murder charges against drug dealers. City officials did not say exactly when next year the group would begin this work or how many staff would be assigned to it.

“We have already been working with these state agencies to deal with the open-air drug dealing that’s been happening in San Francisco,” Mayor London Breed told reporters on Friday, “we plan to take it a step further.”

“This is impacting the quality of life in San Francisco more than any other drug we’ve encountered,” Breed said. “We must treat the trafficking and sale of fentanyl more severely, and people must be put on notice that pushing this drug could lead to homicide charges.”

Under the plan, the law enforcement task force would investigate opioid cases as a homicide if there is sufficient evidence from an overdose death scene to trace it to a specific dealer. Medical examiners currently determine what substances are involved in an overdose death, and evidence from the scene where a person overdoses could then be used by the district attorney’s office to file murder charges against the supplier.

This dramatic shift to charging some drug dealers with murder comes after Breed and Newsom earlier this year announced that state law enforcement agencies would assist San Francisco in cracking down on drug dealing and drug trafficking.

Before that, the state added more than $1 billion to support the National Guard’s efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking, and state law enforcement seized 594% more fentanyl in 2022 compared to 2021, according to Newsom’s office.

More on the Opioid Crisis

Efforts to increase punishments for drug dealers are also escalating locally and nationally. In California, at least two dealers have been convicted of murder charges related to a fentanyl overdose death since last year. Breed’s plan will have San Francisco follow San Diego and Santa Clara counties, which have already moved to charge some dealers with homicide.

“We hope that dealers will decide that San Francisco is not the place for them to be dealing,” Breed said. “People who are dealing these drugs need to be accountable in a way they haven’t been before.”

Nationwide, just 28 people in the country faced drug-induced homicide prosecutions in 2007, but that spiked to nearly 700 people in 2018, based on an analysis of media reports from Northeastern University School of Law.

Fatal drug deaths have increased, as well, across the country and the Bay Area in recent years.

San Francisco is currently on track to have its deadliest year on record for overdose deaths. There have been 619 overdose deaths in the city from January to September, according to data from the office of the medical examiner. San Francisco is projected to have 200 more overdose-related fatalities this year than last year.

“Treating opioid deaths similarly to homicides only serves to stigmatize those battling substance use disorders and can discourage individuals from seeking assistance,” said Gary McCoy, vice president of policy and public affairs at HealthRight 360, which provides drug treatment services in San Francisco. “Such an approach also exacerbates cycles of incarceration without achieving the essential objectives of overdose prevention and saving lives in public health.”

The worsening of the city’s overdose crisis that occurred in tandem with those changes has experts, like Chan, deeply concerned about the city’s efforts to move further in that direction.

Public health and harm reduction advocates in San Francisco have for many years been pushing the city to open up more services to address the demand for drugs, like supportive housing, more treatment options and safe consumption sites where people struggling with addiction can use drugs in a medically supervised setting and doctors can reverse an overdose.

“They announce policy after policy that is focused on criminalizing, police-centered approaches, rather than public health approaches,” Chan said. “We urge the mayor, the governor and other city officials, including our DA, to take stock of how much of a failure this approach has been and how harmful it’s been in terms of increasing overdoses.”

KQED senior editor Tyche Hendricks and reporter Oscar Palma contributed to this story.

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