More Hard Drug Users Than Public High School Students In San Francisco
On February 29, @TheRabbitHole84 tweeted “More people were injecting drugs than getting a high school education in San Francisco,” citing an article published in Legal Insurrection in February 2019. The San Francisco Chronicle had also circulated a similar headline entitled “San Francisco— Where Drug Users Outnumber High School Students”
However, the study featured in the article only explores students enrolled in public high schools. According to the city Health Department featured in Legal Insurrection, there are approximately 24,500 injection drug users in San Francisco, with 16,000 students enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District’s 15 public high schools. When accounting for private high school students, the total number of high school students reaches 33,603 for the 2018-2019 school year.
The New York Times affirms that San Francisco does have a drug problem, explaining the city “was No. 4 for overdose deaths among U.S. counties with more than 500,000 people,” and “its rate was more than double the national average,” but this does not mean injection drug users outnumber high school students in the city.
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