MacArthur Park Is Melting in the Darkness of Fentanyl

AUDIO – AND I’LL NEVER HAVE THAT RECIPE AGAIN –

Sept. 18, 2023 – The Southern California News Group interviewed Elliot, dozens of other people who use fentanyl, business owners, residents, LAPD personnel, homeless outreach workers, and medical professionals over several months, discovering how the intertwined crises of homelessness, addiction and petty theft have made MacArthur Park an epicenter of a deadly epidemic.

Overdoses are a daily occurrence in the area, says Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the neighborhood.

“When we think about the epidemic of overdoses, of fentanyl use, of sales,” she says, “MacArthur Park is ground zero.”

At a county level, the synthetic opioid was responsible for 1,504 fatal overdoses in 2021, a 1,280% increase from 109 overdoses in 2016, according to the most-recent data available from the county’s Department of Public Health. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin by weight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Imagine comparing a very light beer with 100% grain alcohol,” says Joseph Friedman, a drug researcher at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “It’s that degree of magnitude of intensity in terms of the psychoactive effects.”