Adverts sprouting up around San Francisco are demanding local leaders do more to address the city's ongoing fentanyl epidemic.

Plastered throughout the Democratic stronghold's most drug-ridden neighborhoods, the ads are meant to upset - and contain and statements that criticize officials for 'normalizing our fentanyl crisis.'

Pointed slogans intended to lambaste the lukewarm response - which has left citizens to navigate a mess of open-air drug markets and tent encampments - include 'SF enables drug use but not recovery', and the sarcastic 'That's Fentalife'.

Others tell fed-up citizens 'it's time to stop normalizing our fentanyl crisis,' and contain QR codes that take viewers to a page where they can send emails to Mayor Breed and the city's Board of Supervisors.

The campaign comes from the relatively new advocacy group TogetherSF Action, which seeks to stoke a more pronounced course of action from Breed and those tasked with creating the Bay Area locale's legislation to address the crisis - which has snuffed out nearly double the lives claimed by COVID-19 in

Adverts sprouting up around San Francisco are now demanding local leaders do more to address the city's ongoing fentanyl epidemic, which local officials have so far failed to address.

Pictured is a computer generated rendition of some of the scathing ads

Plastered throughout the city's most drug-ridden neighborhoods, the ads are meant to upset - and contain imagery and statements that criticize officials for 'normalizing' the fentanyl crisis

'We want people to stop looking the other way.

We have to confront this problem if we're gonna solve it,' TogetherSF Action Director Kanishka Cheng told The San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, calling the campaign a wake-up call for the public.

'We have to shock people into action to realize this is actually not normal,' he added. 'It's not OK, and we can do better. 

'The people in distress on our streets deserve better.'

Such sentiments were what spurred Cheng and several other like-minded San Franciscans to start the group late last year, following a string of failed experiments from the city's notoriously lenient government.

Unsuccessful stints saw civic staffers hand out alcohol and tobacco to homeless and drug-addicted residents in hard-hit neighborhoods such as Tenderloin and SoMa, two of three sites where the procession of posters were put up this week.

With this new effort, Cheng and others hope to enflame already existing embers of outrage that have smoldered for the past few years, as a simple stroll through the city's streets continues to incite fear in the hearts of residents.

Speaking to the Chronicle, the director - who started TogetherSF Action as offshoot of a nonprofit formed in 2020 - explained how he believes the city's current course of action has actually enabled drug use instead of quelling it.

'There's a lot of focus on the outreach and overdose prevention side and much less of a focus on converting people into recovery and into treatment,' Cheng said, citing the city's introduction of a meth sobering center nearly a year ago, as well as 350 behavioral health beds over the past several years.

The first phase of the ad campaign started this week with murals  in the Tenderloin and two in SoMa, along with this billboard at 560 Brannan Street bearing a scathing message

The lukewarm response has left citizens to navigate a mess of open-air drug markets and tent encampments - something the city has refused to outright prohibit

The pointed ads, which sprouted up this week, are strategically situated along some of the city's most problematic corners.

The provide fed-up citizens with QR codes that take them to a page where they can send emails to city officials

'We want people to stop looking the other way.

We have to confront this problem if we're gonna solve it,' TogetherSF Action Director Kanishka Cheng said Tuesday, calling the campaign a wake-up call for the public

Months removed from the pandemic, the city's recovery has still lagged in recent months - with streets as unsafe as they were before and overdoses still rife

With this new effort, Cheng and others hope to enflame already existing embers of outrage that have smoldered for the past few years, as a simple stroll through the city's streets continues to incite fear in the hearts of residents

Called TogetherSF, the advocacy group's presiding nonprofit is also aimed at boosting civic engagement among those disaffected by San Francisco politics, particularly by policies of appeasement seen since the pandemic