Perhaps you don’t visit the California Department of Public Health’s website, which lists resources for “People who Use Drugs.”
It advises everyone, wisely, not to do drugs alone. But, if you must, it suggests you dial a 1-800 number — one for English-speakers and one for Spanish — and stay on the line with an operator. If you become unresponsive, that person will call for an ambulance to come and save you.
So, that’s legal. That’s happening. That’s promoted on the state Department of Public Health website. If you’re doing drugs — perhaps in your room, perhaps in an alleyway — someone will stay on the phone with you, and send help if you start to die. And, hopefully that help gets there eventually.
What’s not yet legal, what’s not yet happening — and what Gov. Gavin Newsom explicitly vetoed — is a situation where Californians could do drugs in a clean, supervised site and someone would be there in person and, if things go sideways, provide medical help immediately.
The word “serious” feels like it’s in heavy rotation these days, spurred in large part because of Logan Roy’s stinging rebuke of his feckless children on “Succession:” “I love you. But you are not … serious people.”
When it comes to addressing rampant drug-use deaths, we don’t feel like a serious state. Let alone a serious city.
San Francisco is a city famous for its fog and, at times, it feels like we govern through one.
So, earlier this month, elements of a half-baked plan began wafting out of back rooms and through closed doors. There would be … a tent! And there was a search underway for a suitable Tenderloin site for it. God help us, but all too many disturbingly impromptu city plans seem to start with someone saying, “Hey! Let’s get a tent! A big tent!”
This big tent would serve as something of a forced sobering center (read: 21st century drunk tank) where people in the throes of drug use could be transported, whether they liked it or not, by law enforcement. The details one gleaned as time went by changed, because the plan was changing.
At present, there is no tent, and the current iteration of the plan floating about the political ether — which is still, clearly, amorphous and a work in progress — directs cops to arrest and temporarily detain incapacitated drug users, who are a risk to themselves and others. This would be done under statutes that police tell me, like Dorothy Gayle, they’ve had the power to use all along. But they haven’t, because they found that detaining incapacitated people for a few hours a pop to be a labor-intensive and poor use of police resources , and did little to alter the situation on the streets.
Well, that tracks. If the plan is to detain dope-sick, suffering drug users for several hours and proselytize to them about turning their lives around via services they’re not able or willing to accept — while the city’s services aren’t presently able to accommodate even people who are able and willing — that doesn’t sound like a winner.
It sounds more like appeasing anger over the deplorable state of San Francisco’s streets in an exercise of cruel futility at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable. And this — this has consequences of its own.
An April paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the wanton and continual involuntary displacement of homeless people — jerking people around, in non-scientific terms — may contribute to a mortality spike of between 15.6 percent and 24.4 percent over a 10-year period. And yes, this paper included data from San Francisco.
“Our study found that continuing to forcibly displace people who are experiencing homelessness, as is being proposed in San Francisco, is responsible for up to 25 percent more deaths in a 10-year period,” said Alex Kral, an epidemiologist from the East Bay independent nonprofit research institute RTI international, and one of the paper’s many authors.
“That policy literally kills people in the long run.”
Last week, San Francisco took in the spectacle of Board President Aaron Peskin holding the monthly mayoral question session on UN Plaza, and asking Mayor London Breed pointed queries about the city’s surge in overdose deaths. It remains mystifying what Peskin or anyone felt could be accomplished in holding this meeting out-of-doors on the plaza, where the predictable heckler’s veto was, in fact, superseded by a heckler’s tossed brick.
And this predictable and predicted meltdown was not, as was claimed afterward, a sign of a devolution of San Francisco public space. Raucous people would’ve overwhelmed this meeting if the subject matter was fentanyl overdoses or conditional use authorizations or selecting the city’s official mineral. And this could’ve happened at any time in the past 55 or so years; Civic Center has been a haphazard place for a long time, and there’s a reason we hold government meetings indoors.
So, that was odd. As was Mayor Breed’s get-tough stemwinder about confronting this city’s drug problems — she does realize she’s been mayor since 2018, right? Breed on Tuesday told the Board that “We are looking at being more aggressive with people who are struggling with addiction … compassion is killing people.”
On Thursday, however, she said that “San Francisco is a compassionate city that leads with services in our efforts to help people struggling with addiction …”
Well, to crib one of the lesser-known lines from “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”: “That don’t make no sense!” But the mayor’s competing and often negating impulses regarding misery and drug use in the heart of the city — Initiate evidence-based solutions! And get the cops out there arresting people! — were long ago called out as cognitively dissonant by bewildered community members. So this inconsistency is, in fact, consistent.
And if compassion is now viewed as killing people, the city seems ready to pivot to cruelty.
Yes, San Francisco is continuing to invest in treatment solutions, even in the face of a massive budget shortfall. Yes, in October, the city published a comprehensive overdose prevention plan. But the city’s planned augmentations — 30 beds here, 30 beds there — are almost comically inadequate. And the comprehensive overdose plan hasn’t come close to being fully enacted.
Alarmingly, the overarching goal of our big overdose prevention plan is to reduce the deaths by just 15 percent — by 2025. That’s a depressingly modest milestone. And, tragically, we’re failing miserably to reach even that. At present, overdose deaths aren’t going down but, rather, are 41 percent above this point in 2022. And 2022 was bad.
So, yes, things are bad. And, in response, the city continues to propose law-enforcement responses to address a public health crisis. That’s bad, too.
Also bad is that the backbone of the city’s big overdose prevention plan is the creation of multiple safe consumption sites. This hasn’t happened and, thanks to Newsom’s veto, they can’t be publicly funded. The city can’t even use the $230 million settlement it recently won from Walgreens over the pharmaceutical chain’s admitted wrongdoing in fueling this city’s opioid epidemic — because that, too, is government money.
The present city budget calls for funding “Wellness Hubs” to combat rampant drug use and overdoses. But without the safe-consumption element, this is a bit like putting hamburgers on the menu without the patties.
The hubs won’t have a safe-consumption element unless the nonprofits running them can pay for that part themselves. As you’d guess, this is not the easiest fundraising ask. And the city’s lack of urgency on this matter is perplexing: We are told that San Francisco officials and nonprofits’ next scheduled meeting to discuss the funding of safe-consumption sites isn’t until mid-June.
In a city where around 67 people are dying by overdose every month, this languid timeframe simply beggars belief.
Cruelty, it turns out, can take many forms. Including a serious problem and a government response that is, fundamentally, not serious.
And there’s no 1-800 number to call for help about that.
Substitute the word “crack” for “fentanyl” and you have a similar drug epidemic/crisis that is being dealt with using the same failed policies. I was a cop in the City in the 80’s, and I saw the continual increase in policing, harsher sentencing, and exploding prison populations. How did that work out for us? Besides the racist sentencing enhancements for possession of crack (fentanyl) cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine. If more police and more arrests equal a reduction of drug users and dealers, the Tenderloin would be the champs de elysees of San Francisco.
The sheer lunacy of any proposed harsher sentences, targeted enforcement, and zero tolerance approaches would be laughable if it weren’t for the dead bodies piling up all around us.
Newsom’s rejection of safe injection sites is not surprising. It would take a truly courageous and visionary politician, if such a unicorn actually existed, to really offer some new and innovative programs and approaches to solving this, and so many other problems.
I love the circus that my city is and always has been. I’m getting a little tired of the clown show that taints the rest of the performance.
Seattle is dying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw
Canada is dying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RaWzJUeT0o
SF government should had watched these long ago.
Why is there not more of an effort to test substances for the presence of poison? SFStandard ran an article on testing by local nonprofit FentCheck.org with an online map of sites that distribute free test strips… Why not protect people from the poison instead of rescuing them from it after they ingest it?
Conflating homelessness and Open Drug use (and overdose) is the flaw in this article. I live at 7th & Mission, a true open use drug site with supervision (from other users), and it is horrible to watch. From my window I watch 3-5 Paramedic visits DAILY to reverse overdoses, some fatal. Users come there because the dealers are clustered around. Most of the users are NOT homeless…they go back to their rooms in nearby SRO’s. Some come pushing carts, but nobody sleeps on that corner. Some are in terrible physical shape, open wounds & bandages. Clearly not able to care for themselves or make rational decisions. We know several by name. They need to be hospitalized, and not just for three days. Leaving them outside to suffer and die is NOT compassion. But it also has nothing to do with Homeless tent sweeps. Separate the problems, Joe.
The simple fact is San Francisco’s city government policies have attracted and continue to attract drug addicts and the homeless and enabling them to remain here. It is hubris to think San Francisco or any other city can address what is in fact a nationwide problem. Real solutions require massive funding that can only be provided by Wasington, along with a coordinated plan for real treatment centers and services. But as usual, Congress is in denial about real problems and concerned more with polarized political warfare.
Even if Washington were to take realistic action and funding, the fact remains drug addiction for most users is literally a dead end. Few are willing to accept or enter treatment, and of those who do, many return to drug use. Their problems didn’t start with drug use, it started with personal and enotional problems that led to drug use. By all means treatment programs with mental health services should be made available because it will save some, and the very fact of their existence may encourage more to try to overcome their addiction.
Safe injection sites alone do nothing but enable drug addiction and prolong an already miserable life. Only when combined with real treatment centers, not understaffed and underfunded ones, will safe injection sites have a positive impact.
Drug addiction is a complex problem that will never have a total solution, but compassion requires large-scale organization and funding beyond the ability of San Francisco alone. While well-intentioned, the city’s efforts have failed and will continue to fail. It has also created a small army of “advocates” whose livelihood is entirely dependent on ever more demands for
city funding. The result has transformed San Francisco into one big open air drug market and injection site.
I’ve lived outside the U.S. for some years now so am an observer from afar, not directly involved in any of it.
I have to say, the idea that society has to go to great lengths to enable drug users to do their thing sounds completely bonkers to me. You get more of the behavior you subsidize.
The other thought is that “cruel” is the Left’s new way to try to demonize any behavior that’s insufficiently Leftwing. We don’t just disagree with your polcy, it will have cause irreversibly harmful effects. In fact, it’s INTENDED to be harmful because its proponents enjoy seeing people suffer.
The idea that Breed, her other faults notwithstanding, will revel in the alleged harm her policies will cause is absurd and not worth printing in a serious newspaper.
It’s good to point out the rhetorical absurdities on the Right… but the media does that all the time. You see the “cruel” label used from top to bottom in the media and no one points out how dishonest it is. Just like here.
Thanks for the article. I must say that the reason safe consumption is “not the easiest fundraising ask” is because harm reduction at SF DPH (and their companion non-profits) is an ideology, not a science. No one at SFDPH’s behavioral health unit seems to point to studies, or facts; not at meetings, not at presentations, not in their public comms. Those who ask questions are maligned – a common behavior of ideologues. So, it’s hard to create a fundraising argument for safe consumption when the loudest proponents aren’t into logical appeals. The city officials (paid over $300K/year often) behind these soon-to-fail hubs won’t do the work to explain to the public why these hubs will work. And the longer they refuse to explain, the more it seems like it’s because they can’t.
Highly paid DPH doctors are making out well — using public funds to test unproven theories. The linkage center is all anyone needs to know about city of sf competency. DPH gave $500K to RTI/Kral to justify the Tenderloin “Linkage” Center, and it was a joke.
Are these docs interested in public health or getting papers published?
Joe,
You should try to interview Ricci Wynne about the problem of drugs and homelessness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuTP3x1nviU
I had lost a good friend to fentanyl. He was a normal guy until one day he started taking the drug and got addicted to it. He had almost died a few times. The last time I saw him when he was very sickly looking and asking for $. The city services such the authorized drug sites just made things worse. Just thinking about this again is pretty sad.
You mean the idiot that has a reputation harassing city staff, went on a media blitz with a “cocaine dinner” with federal authorities, and goes on right wing media parading harassment of the homeless?
That Ricci?
He sure isn’t the truthsayer you think he is.
Sorry, but your comment, “But without the safe consumption element this is a bit like putting hamburgers on the menu without the patties,” would make more sense if it referred to the fact that we have zero drug treatment programs to refer any addicts who might actually want to *stop* using drugs. (Safe consumption sites work in places like Portugal because – and only because – they have treatment programs for addicts). This is the *real* “meat” that is missing from your hamburger menu. And so-called “safe” injection sites are the “junk food” that has already destroyed the health of the only neighborhood in which it was tried. Sorry, but without treatment options, you are only enabling addicts (and the dealers who prey on them) – and destroying working-class neighborhoods, like ours.
Bingo. All carrot and no stick just leads to more despair. People love to reference Portugal but have zero idea of what the heck they’re talking about. In Portugal , in addition to robust treatment programs, if you deny those programs and cause problems in public you still get arrested and if you’re a dealer good luck. The punishments are incredibly harsh. There are even laws enforced to keep repeat drug use offenders out of specific areas within cities.
If a minor doesn’t have a legal guardian, because we assume the young person lacks the capacity to make decisions for him or herself, the courts step in and one govt org or another provides care whether the person wants it or not. Why can’t we use a similar approach with adults who lack the capacity to make decisions for themselves?
Exactly. Decriminalization of illicit drugs does not mean legalization in Portugal. Drug use there is taken very seriously. You must comply to education at minimum for first time users and counseling/treatment for repeat users. Safe injection sites are reserved for those in very early recovery or who have failed other treatments. Drug dealers are punished. Portugal is also a different culture from ours. Families seem to be more involved. People seem to remain closer to the town or city of their birth so social structures remain intact. SF can learn lessons from Portugal for sure but let’s make sure our leaders actually know what they actually did there.
Can you please run for mayor?
Are you serious?
JE
But you sure as hell don’t bother to offer “safe posting” on your authoritarian web site. By the way I’m now in a luxury suite directly on the Vendome in Paris. We had Foie Gras at lunch, you can’t get that in San Francisco anymore, but you can get all the meth you want. How insane. Absurd compassion is antipodean to actual care and concern of the communities health. The more you legitimize the lowest and most destructive human behaviors, the more your society degrades. You have three children, so you have way more skin in the game than I do. How wonderful for you to advocate for easy and acceptable hard drug use in their futures. Things are looking up!
SF government initially began with good intentions in trying to solve the drug and homeless problems, but it currently has bad results. Now, it wants the state to allow this at a larger scale, which is not logical and costly. California and San Francisco are already in debt for their budgets.
https://www.data-z.org/state_data_and_comparisons/detail/california
https://www.data-z.org/state_data_and_comparisons/city/sanfrancisco
These problems have been repeated multiple times in the news and youtube for years, yet SF government failed to re-evaluate and re-test its failed system of fixing the problems. Now, SF has more non-natives coming to SF for its generous city services. It has more drug and homeless related crimes. It made itself a magnet for certain sub-groups who really don’t belong here who are gaming the system at the expense of its existing taxpayers. Some cities and states are dumping their human problems into SF by giving one-way bus tickets, and some are coming here themselves.
You want SF to be a place people want to live, work, and do business in. You don’t want it to be known as a place you don’t want to be due to crime and homelessness issues.
Really, just admit your current system of the solving the problem does not work, and change it to something that has been proven to work. Other cities and states have already done this, why can’t SF look into their models and systems and replicate this to solve its problems?
What has worked? Fentanyl overdoses are rocketing up all over the county. San Francisco’s drug overdose rate used to be an extreme outlier, unfortunately it no longer is.
Tough love and tough on crime, reclassifying Fentanyl as a more serious drug with more penalties, closing the drug markets, closing city drug injection sites, redirecting addicts to other existing paid services to get them off drugs, periodic drug testing to make sure they are compliant to receive city paid services, arresting drug dealers with more serious charges, and arresting repeat drug users. This was something passed by both parties recently that is in the correct direction:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4020557-dozens-of-democrats-join-gop-in-passing-bill-on-fentanyl-related-drug-penalties/
The current city system in place for drug problem is not working, so it has to do else something to correct its growing problem.
Another great article Joe
I get you, and you are pointing to an ugly chain of policy.
But I can’t just get to the idea that safe consumption sites are the magic bullet you hope. At best they’ll just enable continued misery, but at worst they’ll spark a huge public backlash and shut down immediately with things worse off.
Overdose rates started to grow exactly when we closed Tenderloin Center.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-mayor-breed-overdose-tenderloin-center-fentanyl-17846320.php
With nothing else to attribute this change, and “Tranq” wasn’t even hot yet.
Now it’s accelerating with no end in sight.
Drug consumption sites are popular in SF, but the mayor doesn’t have the balls to do it. Neither the governor.
We’re more fucked if we don’t do something that actually works.
And with Fentanyl, time’s up.
What? The article you linked showed ODs were rising basically every month the center was open. Almost every month the center was open had more ODs than the same month a year ago.
Exactly right. Overdoses went up after the center opened. But it would have gone up more if not for the center! Lol. You cannot displace religious beliefs.
Time’s up London. You’ve been flaming and blaming the Board of Supervisors and the former DA for your incredibly lame and tone deaf decision making for nearly 10!years. Grow up! Take responsibility! Lead! People are suffering under your petty, shitty senseless gaze. You are an EPIC FAILURE as SF mayor. This citizen cannot wait until you are voted out at the ballot box. Recalls are for Tech Tools.
Thank you for reporting on what is happening. I would appreciate articles like this (that strike a tone of a better solution being obvious) directing readers to possible solutions, perhaps being enacted by other societies that are better solving drug crisis. This would give readers a path to solution oriented thinking.
Born in the Mission and raised in the Excelsior. I have worked in Civic Center for the last 20 years for the City at the AAM. TY for this article. Very well put. The City that once knew how is what heard growing up has lost its way.
This needs to proceed on two tracks. If you have resided here for – pick a reasonable time – say, 3 years or more, and you’re an addict, we’ll get you housing and help and, sure, a place to use your drugs without dying. If you came to SF from elsewhere to buy, sell, or use drugs, you’ll be arrested and locked up, repeatedly if you keep breaking the law. SF cannot be the housing provider and addiction services provider for the whole country. We’re already a magnet for drug users and sellers because they know they can come here and the laws simply won’t be enforced. It makes no sense to become an even bigger attraction for that by offering yet another benefit to illegal drug users without some counter-measures. Yes, I know, prison is expensive (although the state, not SF, absorbs prison costs) but word will get out and the influx will slow. A national solution would be better, but no way we see that. So we need to couple compassion with enforcement of the laws the people have passed.
the fact that the backbone of this plan is more safe consumption sites deeply concerns me. keeping people alive long enough to continue their addiction cycle is not compassion. in an sf chronicle article i read that these sites dont even offer resources to get clean. when have we as a city ever had more than contempt for the homeless? when i was still a child some 15 years ago we passed a law that criminalizes sitting on the sidewalk. we criminalized sleeping in a vehicle long before i was born. im just at a loss of what to do and i feel myself growing numb to the pain of the human suffering around me and i stay in my bubble out by the ocean as i struggle to afford to live in the city that raised me, and I just don’t know how we are going to move past this.
This may be odd, but quite frankly I don’t have a problem with people doing drugs. I also don’t mind if they don’t want treatment. It’s their right to choose whatever life they’d like.
I do have a problem with them doing it on the street, where it affects other peoples use of public space. Arrest them for it and make the penalty severe, or then force them into treatment. Alternatively, Why not offer folks a confined space where they can do all the drugs they like, but we don’t spend tax payer cash for people looking after them. If they want to use drugs, they also run the risk of overdose – it’s their choice in the end.
The places where people can do all of the drugs they like attract crime, drug dealers, and use and homelessness in the vicinity. Neighborhoods around the consumption sites in NYC and Vancouver have learned that the hard way. Yet the mayor in her desperation vows that she’s going to force these on the city, whether we like it or not. She refuses to say “no” to the addicted.
There are no data that show that these sites “save lives.” They do sometimes prevent immediate death from overdose, though on-site deaths are starting to be reported. Maintaining the chronically addicted who refuse even to attempt treatment is burdening San Franciscans more every year. The climate is shifting, and we no longer .want to put up with it
I cannot agree more with comments from marcos. What no one wants to talk about is the fact that the moneyed class that runs this city could care less about the deaths of addicts or homeless. If anything, they probably find it a natural outcome of their right-wing policies. So why all of a sudden Pacific Whites and Marina residents have become alarmed about the drug overdose and fentanyl deaths in an area of the City that they don’t even frequent anyway? Because tough talks lead to draconian measures intended to curtail our civil liberties. It’s a page right out of W and Cheney’s playbook who used the 911 attacks to reduce our civil liberties. Conspiracy theory? No, it’s a healthy dose of skepticism on my part when I hear uppity San Franciscans feigning concern over an issue that does not affect them while supporting a cruel and incompetent mayor along with her allies whose rise to power was solely facilitated by them.
It isn’t just “the monied class” in this city who object to rampant drug addiction and a homelessness crisis. Everyday working people have had their mail and packages stolen, their homes and apartments broken into, their car windows smashed, small neighborhood businesses vandalized repeatedly (and some closing), have to fear riding on Muni or Bart, hear gun shots ring out in the night, read about people robbed and/or knifed and attacked on Market Street and in their own neighborhoods, have to walk carefully to avoid human excrement, urine and tossed hypoderdermics on their sidewalks, and listen to all-talk-and-no-action local politicians who spend incredible amounts of public money every year on the drug and homeless problem that only results in enabling addiction (not reducing it or fatal overdoses) and enabling the homeless from every other state to set up camp here.
These are the everyday problems that everyday San Franciscans face, and your class war oversimplification rhetoric only serves to perpetuate or increase their problems, not solve them.
You show a laissez-faire attitude towards these deaths, while blaming “other people ” for our problems. That’s San Francisco!
I realize increasing funding for police is a political third-rail around these parts, but perhaps making a concerted effort to eliminate the real criminals here – the people supplying the drugs – maybe worth a try? I’d much rather see taxpayer dollars go to getting rid of the scum causing the problem in the first place that paying for far, far too few consumption sites and shelter beds.
San Francisco is destroying itself, and this due to bad governance of the BOS and the mayor. If you drive by 1170 Market St. at night, you’ll see people selling and doing drugs. This place like Farmers Market at night for drugs.
You have to regulate this if you want your city to be a place for its law abiding people and growing businesses. This means enforcing laws and busting drug dealers and repeat offenders. This means regulating non-profits in making sure the city $ provided to them actually produces something that really matters. They should not be entities who are intaking so much $, yet producing so little in return.
Businesses and people are leaving San Francisco are warnings that can’t be ignored. This affects local government taxes for services. This affects employment of local people. This places financial stress on the rest of the taxpayers who live and work in the city. This affects economics and people willnessiness to come here for tourism, living, and business. Currently, businesses feel they are not getting services paid from their tax $ when it comes to crime and safety. Some businesses have been hit too many times with crime that their insurance companies are dropping them. They in turn will close, layoff more employees, or they will leave and setup shop somewhere else. How much people and businesses does it take for San Francisco to implement corrective action in reversing this?
It’s better to do this sometime soon, than much later. The remaining businesses and tax paying people are your customers that you are ignoring. Remember, you exist to service your customers; otherwise, expect more of them to leave you. If you tax the remaining ones more, expect more of them to leave as well. State and federal governments don’t have debt ceilings they can raise, but they have to pay what is due.
If they don’t, they will have reduce or cut their services, salaries, and retirement pensions as well.
The idea that enabling drug addicts, helping them to stay addicted being compassion is an idea I can never agree with.
In true 2020s fashion, there’s also “an app for that” instead of an 800 number: https://www.brave.coop/overdose-detection-app
> In a city where around 67 people are overdosing every month, this languid timeframe simply beggars belief.
You might want to have an editor look at that. I’m pretty sure there’s probably 67 overdosed every day.
Jake —
Assuming you’re not being a jerk here, 67 are dying. I can clarify that.
JE
Joe, when am I ever a jerk? You keep letting me post because though I may not be pleasant, I am usually sincere (and right!). Have a good one.
when kamala was district attorney, she hada moritorium on sex work. she would not prosecute those cases. the workers were allowed to do their thing safer and more discreetly. even online with back page. then they started to enforce it again and the page was sued. anyways, the same can be done for the sites. as long as the district attorney doesnt bring the charges. they d be inside and safer. the politicians cant openly support them, unless the feds change their laws.
If the Board of Supervisors is going to take the political hit for Breed’s strong mayor governing malfeasance, then the Board needs to put DHSH funds on Board reserve during the budget season and have monthly hearings to check progress towards goals by DHSH before releasing next month’s tranche.
The City needs to get serious about taking the same approach to opiate harm reduction that SF took on needle exchange a generation ago to effectively shut down one vector for HIV transmission.
Safe supply, where pharmaceutical opiates with known dosages and purities are provided to addicts under medical supervision is the way out of this. Fentanyl is cheaper than paying staffers to thrash laundered money with questionable outcomes. Retired doctors could prescribe addiction maintenance fentanyl like they did syringes back in the day. This would shut down the open air markets tomorrow, solving one chunk of the visible problem.
The impetus driving Breed is to try to crap out the last vestiges of San Francisco as a class diverse city once and for all, to complete what recently deceased Chester Hartman described as “The Transformation of San Francisco.”
This is an immune response from the latest wave of enriched prospector arrivistes against the existing city. Just as the urbanists “gardeners” at Parcel 36 did not come here to negotiate, they came to plant the seeds of neighborhood sterilization, the fentanyl fanatics came here to wedge the desired political outcome and can only be beaten politically by a broad based grassroots mobilization that the nonprofits will try to squash.
This wave of opiate addiction was largely stoked by the Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma’s Oxycontin. See Nan Goldin/Laura Poitras’ 2022 Oscar nominated documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” good art and good politics, both analysis and activism.
There is no moral failing in becoming addicted via pharmaceutical, medical and pharmacy profiteering.
There is no moral failing in poverty or homelessness, Protestant protestations notwithstanding. Were I homeless in this economy, you’d better damn well bet that I’d be ingesting as much fentanyl as humanly possible to dull the pain. As a gay Jew raised under Christian anti-semitism and homophobia, Christian dominant ideology stands out in stark relief where it is just the norm to most.
The Puritan prospectors are imposing archaic religious Christian moral frameworks onto people living shit lives, and would compel them to face their shit lives undulled by anything. This is what we get when the approach is limited to “faith, hope and charity,” with heaven waiting the faithful for their suffering. As if homelessness were not cruel enough, more cruelty via dogma.
There will be no unshittification of lives, an unshittification that could be accomplished simply by repealing Care Not Cash and directing the DHSH to provide substantial cash grants to homeless people as a down payment on reparations for the crime against humanity spree that we’ve all fostered. That’s the best opiate treatment right there. But no, “there will always be poor.” Just be sure to be seen washing their feet.
Dorsey, for his part, deserves special consideration. While strategic spokesperson for the SFPD, Matt had a “relapse,” which meant that he illegally paid a drug dealer to illegally sell him illegal substances which he illegally used. Has Dorsey reported this dealer to the authorities or is that death merchant still peddling poison in our community, TO OUR CHILDREN? Or is that line all bullshit and there are special rules for the few?
Furthering the Christian frame, Dorsey does not live a shit life. He’s been a highly paid public facing professional for decades, yet he illegally used while speaking officially for law enforcement and now is spearheading cruel, punitive attacks on people who did what he did.
This dichotomy recognizes sin and seeks to avoid the (often sexual) wrath of the priest by sucking up to the seat of authority after repeatedly sinning. Don’t abuse me, look at this bigger sinner–over there! This blatantly hypocritical behavior should be resolved on the therapist’s couch, not in the Board of Supervisors. I guess a zillion “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” don’t cut it no more like it used to.
“Be compassionate, do nothing” is what predictably sank the progressive political project on the lucrative money laundering shoals of Care Not Cash. Replacing that with an immune response against unsightly humanity led by a hypocrite who used in contravention of the law while repping law enforcement is not the W we’re being told it is. It is another kill shot towards political end game unless we do something about it.
As a concept, I support Harm Reduction. However,SF already has a constant influx of opiate immigrants arriving here to take advantage of our weather, tolerance, cash, drugs, tents, lack of police presence,and Care. The safer we make it, will we not see more Harm we need to Reduce? I live in an area of the Mission you might call Hoody. The local, culturally-affiliated fraternal organizations are doing some unsanctioned policing on the street and it’s not pretty. That’s how society usually works, however, not as a result of City mandates, programs, or policies.
Holding homeless people and thieves accountable does not equal cruelty. Let the city sweeping begin.
> “Safe supply, where pharmaceutical opiates with known dosages and purities are provided to addicts under medical supervision is the way out of this.”
That’d help, and personally I’d like to see mobile clinics, like Portugal. Obviously direct supervision can never fully be established, and it’s interesting to look at SF’s opioid overdose rates by drug a decade ago:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524842/
My favorite SF “progresssive” is the: ‘Civic Center has been bad for 55 years—big whoop’ progressive.
Such “progress.” Keep it up!
🤌🤌🤌
The problem with this mentality, “let’s just spend more”, is there is no end. If we open safe consumption sites but ODs don’t go down, we don’t have enough sites! The sites are understaffed! We need more services attached to each site! None of the compassion plans have a “we are going to spend this amount of money to get these results. If that doesn’t happen, this isn’t working” element attached to the plan. If you could show me any results from the past ten years of compassion & services, I’d support a higher budget for that strategy.
Compounding the above, and this is more subjective, is my sense for the level of corruption and bloat in the SF government does not make them the best stewards of more money.
I agree in that the cruelty approach is not desirable but shouldn’t we try everything at this point? Otherwise we are simply admitting defeat in that nothing can be done and the city should adjust to and accept this reality while we wait for some magic threshold of more money to finally stop the deaths and misery on the streets.
Housed people use drugs
Rich people use drugs
Middle class people use drugs
I workers in sf restaurants for 23 years and believe me
Many well dressed folks in sf use drugs
Enough hypocrisy
Drugs are a problem but affordable housing is at least as big of a problem
How many peoples drug problems and mental health crises started or got worse following an eviction? If you were in the street what would you do?
40000 vacant units in this city
Many could be filled by folks who have skills, can return to work, are people of heart and decency if they can just get decent housing without the threat of eviction- I never thought I would long for the SROs to come back in full force but at least there was rhyme and reason then
Things could be so so different if we valued each person .