Zombie drug addicts take over streets of San | Political News

A viral video reveals “drugged out zombies” in the streets of San Francisco – though local police have challenged the content in the footage.

The clip, shot at seventh and Market Street in the realm recognized as the Tenderloin neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods most well-known for drug overdoses in the last few years, reveals a number of males in absent-minded states, some with their pants down, while others stand there frozen, staring into space.

One man clutches his arm and twists around wildly, presumably a habits recognized as “tweaking,” – erratic traits shown by somebody high on or coming down from stimulants like methamphetamine or cocaine.

Longtime resident of the realm, JJ Smith, posted the video on X on Thursday. However, local police responded to his video by claiming that this footage was really from a number of years in the past – and that they’ve cleaned up the streets since then.

Officer Rueca of the SFPD, replied, “drug enforcement efforts in June 2023, made over 14,392 arrests and we’ve seized over 1,259 lbs. of narcotics. City looks vastly different than when this video was taken. This pic taken 4/30/26,” he wrote above a supposedly newer picture of the realm.

The image posted by Officer Rueca reveals no graffiti but clean streets and sunshine.

JJ responded to the officers, “It’s a big difference from night and day and from 6 are 7am in the morning. Every officer the to the line station and sheriff department know how it looks out here during the nighttime in an early morning hours.”

SFPD’s Communications director, Evan Sernoffsky, responded again, saying, “JJ, this is an old video. Look at the graffiti on the buildings. Are you claiming this was from this morning? Do you consider that posting old, misleading videos like these will be used to undermine our law-enforcement led efforts to attack the drug markets?”

JJ vowed to go there again at evening and movie another video, tagging police this time to show that this is still occurring.

Another viewer of the video wrote, “Live nearby. always see ppl living on st like this and i will feel sad, sympathetic also a little bit scared as a single female. couldn’t do anything but walk away.”

The opioid epidemic has hit major U.S. cities particularly arduous, with San Francisco one of the locations most affected.

In California, drug use problems had been the third-leading trigger of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in 2019 and ranked as the state’s fifteenth main trigger of death that yr. In San Francisco alone, overdose-related emergency calls average about 76 per week, totaling 2,305 in the past 30 weeks.

Advocates say the real quantity of overdoses is probably going increased, since some are dealt with by bystanders. In San Francisco, overdose-related 911 calls average about 76 a week — 2,305 calls over the past 30 weeks — though advocates say the true quantity of overdoses is probably going increased because some are dealt with by bystanders without contacting emergency companies.

Fatal overdoses have also risen. From March 2023 to March 2024, San Francisco recorded 805 unintentional overdose deaths, averaging roughly 67 a month. That marks an increase from 635 confirmed unintentional deadly overdoses in 2022. The portray referenced in this story is meant to draw consideration to the disaster with empathy and to encourage policymakers to broaden help and treatment sources for people struggling with opioid dependancy.

The metropolis’s current challenges also sit within a longer historical past of housing instability. Homelessness grew in San Francisco and across the U.S. in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Researcher Jennifer Wolch has cited contributing components, including job losses tied to deindustrialization, quickly rising housing prices, and the rollback of social welfare applications.

During the Reagan administration, large cuts to reasonably priced and public housing applications — including Section 8 — shifted a lot of the accountability for public and supportive housing to states and local governments.

Overdose deaths in San Francisco are concentrated in a small half of town. More than 40% happen in the Tenderloin and South of Market (SoMa) neighborhoods, where the above video was shot, with many deaths occurring outside, including on sidewalks in entrance of buildings.

Researchers also say homelessness and drug use don’t always overlap in the way in which many people assume. A UC San Francisco–led report launched in 2025, based on more than 3,200 adults experiencing homelessness, discovered that fewer than half had recurrently used illicit medicine in the earlier six months.

The most generally used medicine in that group had been methamphetamines relatively than opioids — and a vital share of people who had been homeless and used medicine recurrently reported making an attempt to get treatment but being unable to access it.