SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — It’s been three months since California Highway Patrol launched its fentanyl operation in San Francisco. We are learning how much of the deadly drug that the agency has collected in the city.
CHP recovered 15,000 grams of fentanyl, which is about 34 pounds — enough to virtually wipe out the entire Bay Area.
“The big number to look at here is that’s about 7.7 million fatal doses for an adult human being,” said CHP Officer Andrew Barclay.
Barclay, who is with CHP’s Golden Gate Division, says that’s how much fentanyl was seized in san francisco over the last 90 days.
Officials say it takes just two milligrams of fentanyl for a person to overdose.
“The population for the Bay Area in 2018 was 7.75 million people so we’re looking at enough fentanyl to cover the entire Bay Area or to make it a little smaller if we’re looking at Levi’s Stadium that’s enough fentanyl to cover Levi’s Stadium 112 times over,” Barclay said.
This week, the San Francisco Police Department made a drug bust in the city’s Tenderloin district,
Photos sent to KRON4 show officers in the area of Larkin and McCallister. At a town hall hosted by NewsNation, Supervisor Matt Dorsey compared the city’s fentanyl problems to the aids crisis.
CHP officers and the National Guard have been working in San Francisco to tackle the fentanyl crisis — part of the “Operation San Francisco Safe Streets” launched in May.
That was a plan approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
According to CHP, the latest statistics on the program’s progress include just fentanyl alone and do not include other drugs seized in this ongoing operation. Meantime, CHP and SFPD’s partnership will continue to focus on removing as many of these drugs from the streets as they can.