[DoreenMichele]

Those living on the streets were particularly hard hit – with twice as many unhoused people dying of overdoses between January and March compared to a year earlier.

Fentanyl was detected in most of the deaths. The city’s minority populations were particularly hard hit. A third of the overdose victims were Black, despite Black people making up only 5% of the city’s population.

1. So the nation as a whole needs to work on resolving the affordable housing crisis.

2. Maybe they could try taking a medical approach and see if the drugs are de facto self medicating for a particular issue or if specific health issues make death by overdose more likely.

[nradov]

Many fentanyl deaths are more like accidental poisonings than the heroin overdoses we used to see years ago. Mexican drug cartels are manufacturing counterfeit prescription drugs such as Xanax and replacing the active ingredient with fentanyl. They have bad quality control and sometimes the dosage is way too high. People get what they think is a sleeping pill or something relatively harmless from a friend and it kills them.

https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/

We should absolutely address the housing crisis, but I'm skeptical whether that would do much to prevent fentanyl poisoning. It's not just homeless people who are dying.

[DoreenMichele]

Homelessness is a known risk factor for dying of an overdose. They even describe a factor for how and why they think that's true:

"When people don’t have a safe place to go, when they’re using in doorways and public places and they’re afraid of getting caught and put in jail, they tend to rush and use more substance," he said. "And when they rush, there’s a higher risk of overdose."