A year ago, San Francisco extolled a “remarkable” drop in the overdose deaths devastating the city since the pandemic. But progress against the fentanyl crisis has slowed since then.
Numbers released Friday showed overdose deaths stayed roughly flat in 2025, a frustrating result for public officials who had hoped to continue the downward trend, but also encouraging in that the gains from 2024 were not lost.
At least 36 people died from drug overdoses in December, bringing the total tally for the year to 621, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced Friday. It would be the lowest number of fatal overdoses recorded since the city began releasing monthly death counts in 2020, although the figures are preliminary and likely to increase slightly as the city investigates more deaths. The two lowest months of overdose counts on record — October and December — also came in the last quarter of 2025, officials said Friday…