San Francisco’s efforts to eradicate downtown open-air drug markets and reduce historic overdose rates ramped up in the last month, with announcements that police and 130 sheriff’s deputies will be deployed to increase arrests.
The new push is part of an ongoing strategy that will, as of today, include the opening of an in-person Drug Market Agency Coordination Center near Civic Center to coordinate “engagement, enforcement, and treatment” of drug use and sales, according to the mayor’s office.
Will it work? It depends on the goal.
Interviews conducted by Mission Local with 14 public defenders, district attorneys, criminal-justice experts and public-health workers, locally and around the country, yielded a common refrain: Waves of arrests for misdemeanor drug crimes have been tried — and have failed.
That is, they failed if the aim of arrests was to curb addiction, reduce suffering and save lives.
However, some said, if the goal is to sweep drug use from public view, then there is an outside chance a wave of arrests could work.
It’s possible, said some, that the threat of arrest might compel some people who take drugs to seek treatment. Others, however, feared the city’s new protocols will lead to increased overdoses and riskier behavior as normal avenues for drug use are patrolled and supply curtailed.
One thing seems clear from the conversations: San Francisco’s newly announced protocol appears to be an attempt to resurrect the city’s reputation from the grips of the dominating “doom loop” narrative in time for Mayor London Breed’s 2024 reelection campaign.
“The mayor is desperate,” said David Latterman, a political consultant in San Francisco who typically runs campaigns for moderate candidates. “Things are at a boiling point.”
Latterman pointed out that San Francisco has the slowest downtown recovery from Covid-19 of any city in the country. Now, he says, the city has to compete with others, which it never has before. Anything that could inhibit revitalization presents a problem, said Latterman.
“From Willie Brown to Newsom on, we had pro-business folks in office who haven’t paid a lot of attention to the streets.” And now, he said, we’re paying the price.
To some, stern measures show promise
“Arresting people will not solve addiction,” said SFPD Chief Bill Scott in a public meeting last week. “But … it will set a tone of, ‘This is not OK.’”
Steve Wagstaffe, district attorney for San Mateo County, agreed that the new measures may be a way to get people into treatment by making life inconvenient for those using drugs in public.
“To me, it seems pretty obvious, watching the Tenderloin — all the social workers going around, trying to convince people, is not working,” he said.
What many see as a harm-reduction approach, he said, is an unsuccessful one. But repeated jail time could be a good motivator for people with drug dependency to eventually enter treatment.
Of deploying officers into hot spots for drug markets, Wagstaffe said he wasn’t sure it would fare any better, “but it’s something.”
Former Baltimore police officer Peter Moskos, who is now a professor in the Department of Law, Police Science, and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said he was optimistic about San Francisco’s approach.
“You have to be relentless,” said Moskos in reference to the messaging around rules and consequences. “It’s amazing how quickly behavior can change.”
“Simply policing works. The goal is to change behavior,” said Moskos. “Even if that means arresting [someone] 20 times.”
Moskos said that, often, just the threat of arrest can be a deterrent.
Noting the effects of broken windows policing in New York City in the early ‘90s, a practice widely considered to be harmful by civil rights activists, Moskos said that, in testing the protocol first on the subway, the city found that the presence of cops alone was an effective damper on subway crime.
Others were critical of the approach.
“If you could just arrest your way out of it, I think people would have done this a long time ago,” said Jonathan Abel, an associate law professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
“Not only is criminal law not well suited for treatment, it’s also very expensive,” he said. Between the prosecutors, public defenders, judges — everyone has to get paid.
“If this is just political cinema,” he added. “It’s wasteful in all the worst ways.”
Arrests endanger users
The soon-to-be debuted sheriff’s deputies will assist San Francisco police in ramping up arrests for public intoxication, possession of drugs and/or drug sales, in addition to California Highway Patrol officers already deployed.
The Sheriff’s Office stated that they will mostly focus on misdemeanor crimes that, until now, have been patchily enforced. The laws in question call for six months to four years in jail and/or a fine, depending on the circumstances.
The arrests are likely to come down most heavily on Black and brown users — in San Francisco, Black people are six times as likely to be arrested as white people — as well as on unhoused people, who take drugs out on the street. Those at home or at a club, on the other hand, are able to use in private.
The new arrests will also challenge the city’s criminal justice system, according to San Francisco’s public defender, Mano Raju, who stressed that addiction is a disorder — “not criminal conduct.”
Raju noted that the current system is already overloaded, and criminal charges for increased arrests will only add to the backlog — the Public Defender’s Office says more than 1,100 defendants are denied “their constitutional right to a speedy trial” as-is.
“This is going to exacerbate an already precarious situation,” Raju said.
Moreover, arrests typically push someone who’s already vulnerable even closer to the edge. “It often increases the risk of overdose when people have been locked up for some period of time,” he added.
Andrew Suchocki, the medical director at Clackamas County Health Centers in Oregon, said that arrests need a follow up plan.
“If you’re just gonna throw them in jail, I’d want to know a hell of a lot more as to what they’re going to do when they’re in jail,” said Suchocki.
He noted that effective case management while people are in jail and after leaving jail is critical. “Because it’s inhumane if you’re gonna have someone detox and discharge them without any medications … without a plan,” he said. “Your highest chance for overdose is right when you’re released from jail.”
A study published in March focused on drug busts in Indianapolis, Indiana, showed that, in neighborhoods where supply was disrupted by police, overdoses in the area increased. “Persons with opioid use disorder who lose their supply will experience both diminishing tolerance and withdrawal,” the study reads.
The analysis also notes that drug seizures by police tend to encourage sellers to bring in a more potent product to cut back on volume and keep sales up.
Ricky Bluthenthal, a professor at University of Southern California’s Department of Preventive Medicine, likened San Francisco’s public drug-use arrests to homeless sweeps, which have been prevalent in Los Angeles’ Skid Row, an area similar to the Tenderloin.
“Encampment sweeps increase mortality,” said Bluthenthal. Like sweeps, arrests “won’t reduce public drug use; they will just move it.”
In studies he directed in San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, Bluthenthal found that people who were concerned about getting arrested for possessing syringes were likelier to share needles instead — greatly increasing their chances for exposure to Hepatitis C and HIV.
It’s more than likely that city leaders in San Francisco are “responding to political concerns,” he said.
Cosmetic changes
University of California, Berkeley, criminal law professor Jonathan Simon speculated that, from what he can understand of the city’s hazy statements on the crackdown, the goal may be to simply move people away from “the most embarrassing sites” in the city.
While possible, he said, it’s unclear how successful that would be.
“You probably can move people a little bit,” said Simon. “You can motivate them to find less obvious places to use drugs.”
But, he noted, “even sending people to jail for the short trip is not reducing the harm. It could well trigger more use, more need.” And, upon release, that need could result in overdose.
Others echoed the statement, acknowledging that drug use in cities rarely diminishes solely due to repressive measures.
“Let’s say there’s a guy who passed out on the sidewalk at Golden Gate and Leavenworth,” said San Mateo County Judge Don Ayoob. “And so, that choice is: Do I take this guy to detox? Or do I take this guy to jail?”
“It seems like the policy in San Francisco is to take them to jail,” said Ayoob. According to him, in San Mateo County, people detox for a couple days in jail, then get released. And after? “They’re not going to go get treatment, they’re going to go get high.”
Any real impact, said Ayoob, would come from arresting the “guys at the top” and sellers who also use drugs, not buyers. This was also the conclusion of a 2021 report from San Francisco’s Street Level Drug Dealing Task Force, which was put together by the board of supervisors and mayor in 2019.
The report recommended expansion of services and safe consumption sites, as well as prioritizing measures against sellers who don’t struggle with addiction. The task force’s findings were shelved.
“Less than half of the people arrested for possession in San Mateo are willing to come to treatment,” added Ayoob.
The number may be even lower in San Francisco, where Mayor Breed said none of the 25 people arrested for public intoxication at the end of May accepted services.
“At best, arrests have short term, mostly visual impacts,” said Peter Davidson, University of California, San Diego, professor of Global Public Health. “What [San Francisco is] doing means [people who use drugs] go into hiding, which means they are still using drugs, and much likelier to be using drugs alone.”
Around North America
California’s northern neighbors have taken different approaches to the rise in overdoses.
Washington state passed a law in May that elevates possession of harder drugs, like cocaine and meth, to a gross misdemeanor, while scrapping part of a soon-to-expire law that requires police to refer apprehended users to treatment for their first two arrests, and jail time for the third. The law includes funding for clinics and help accessing resources.
At the other end of the spectrum, in 2021, Oregon implemented a measure that decriminalized drugs in the state, instead directing millions into treatment centers that include harm reduction, recovery programs and housing assistance. Advocates say the measure is a humane alternative to jail, arguing that few people in jails and prisons across the country receive treatment, and in-custody overdose rates have climbed.
However, as of February, 2022, one year after the Oregon law took effect, only 1 percent of users had sought recovery treatment through the bill’s funded programs. Some say it’s too soon to measure success; others point to this as a failure.
Over a longer time period, cities could see success. Professor Peter Davidson pointed out that Vancouver, Canada, had formerly practiced routine crackdowns on areas where drugs were prevalent, specifically in Downtown Eastside, an area many compare to the Tenderloin.
Vancouver is home to the world’s first methadone clinic, founded in 1959, and it has had safe-injection sites since 2003. The city has also pioneered centering harm reduction techniques — while, over the years, the death toll from drug overdoses in British Columbia has climbed to the thousands.
According to Davidson, as of January, Vancouver stopped prosecuting people for holding under 2.5 grams of hard drugs, like fentanyl and heroin, offering treatment instead of jail time.
Overdose death rates have lowered in the months since decriminalization, said Davidson. With prioritizing access to safe-injection sites and clean supplies, “people are more likely to enter treatment in the next few months” than those referred after jail time.
“At best,” said Davidson about enforcing arrests against users, “you get a temporary displacement and make it somebody else’s problem for a bit. And, you get whole bunch of death that would never have occurred otherwise.“
The problem with “Jail Time” in San Francisco is that the only downside is no drugs. The rest of it is 3 meals a day, medical care, cable TV, a bed of your own, and the chance to get rich if the jailers do anything stupid. We need to put those people to work, doing things nobody wants to do, like cleaning up all the s**t and tp where the homeless have decided to make it a public toilet, and clean up the homeless camps, so they won’t be welcome there again. Make them dread going to jail, instead of making jail a vacation that’s No Big Deal.
Not sure whether to send an arrestee to jail or detox? How about SF innovated and creates a special detox jail — which essentially is a place where incarcerated people sober up and the facility’s staff knows how to deal with addicts and addiction. The current status quo of letting addicted zombies run free on the streets creating mayhem is not compassionate toward the zombie, nor is it good for the rest of us.
Simple common sense tells you that if you keep arresting drug dealers – dealers that also have dope confiscated – that this will eventually curtail the open air drug dealing they is going in these neighborhoods. This view that arresting people “won’t help” is just nonsense, the more police prescence you have in these neighborhoods the better. Another tool is to deport the the non-citizen drug dealers who are openly dealing drugs, but SF has generallyt not done the things you need to to do to solve the problem. The city has been taken over by impractical left wing idealists, idealists that mean well but are screwing up what was once a great city. The net result of these bad polices over the years has led to a climate of lawlessness in SF that is almost beyond belief, a lawlessness which has led to all these stores closings and all these big companies pulling out of SF. It’s no longer safe to live and work in SF – the phony statistics the city is putting out that claim crime is going down in SF is just public relations nonsese being put out by these left wing types that now run the city.
The only way to get more addicts to voluntarily choose to participate in treatment programs is to enforce the laws as suggested by Breed. Agreed that short term incarceration alone won’t work – but it does make it more difficult / unpleasant to remain addicted. State law and attitudes of the public defenders office will not change.
Drug addiction is a disease. Drug addicts cannot deal with their trauma and mental illness until they are sober. The overwhelming majority of the long term addicted cannot get sober if left to their own devices. Providing addicts ready access to drugs, food, shelter and safe spaces is not humane because it makes it much easier for them to remain addicted. These people need our help, and that comes from long term addiction treatment programs. As noted by Breed, zero of the 25 released from jail chose to go into long term treatment. There ARE programs and resources available. Does SF really owe these 25 an easy on-ramp back into continued addiction with “clean” drugs, free food and permanent homeless encampments? Is this helping the addicted? People, even addicts, respond to incentives. Enforcing the law should motivate more than zero of 25 to try to get sober. The SF status quo is not helping the addicted and IS destroying the City.
As someone who has had personal and professional experience with drug addiction, my experience is that 9 to 12 months is the requisite period for people to become committed to continued sobriety and mentally well, and the success rate is typically lower than 50% even then. Beating addiction is damn difficult. The SF legal system prioritizes the right of an addict to gradually destroy him or herself with drugs over the state’s ability to compel a person into a longer term substance abuse program. Repeated incarceration for violating the law and the end of City supported drug markets and homeless encampments will likely compel more addicts (more than zero of 25) to voluntarily enter the existing long term treatment programs. And long term treatment is the answer.
As long as the government keeps refusing to provide safe pure “drugs” to users, we’ll always has downtown open-air drug markets, period end of story.
Legalize all “drugs” YESTERDAY.
It’s all performance art for the middle class. One of my relatives in Florida was a drug addict. He was arrested over and over again, spent much of his adult life in prison. He would never admit he had a problem or go to rehab. He died in prison, got some smuggled-in drugs that had been cut with something poisonous.
San Francisco is controlled by people with reprobate minds…So obviously those with reprobate minds grow like weeds and they are..
Well, if SF really wants to curb public drug use, the city council might want to consider the unholy practice of actually going to procure drugs and giving them to addicts, as happened during the lock down. Giving people drugs and then arresting your way out of a self-inflicted drug problem is not the way to go…..but then again, this is common sense, something that SF is not known for.
Normal, working, tax paying commuters and residents do not want the hassle and danger of homeless encampment, petty and violent crime, and fifth, especially given the high costs in the City. That is a simple and incontrovertible point, in my opinion.
San Francisco is a train wreck along with most of California. Everyone i knew there has left for sanity elsewhere. I will never give California any tourism dollars again.
Will there ever be a day when it doesn’t require an Expert to tell us police arrests were never the a solution.
Decriminalization is only helping the CARTELS! We need to LEGALIZE drugs, TAX THEM, have businesses and corporations sell unadulterated drugs that aren’t laced with anything, and we would immediately end the TRILLIONS going to cartels in Mexico, South America, and China. They love that drugs set decriminalized because it means their drugs are being sold far more and it’s far easier to profit from them. They can have drug bust after drug just but they’ll keep sending drugs in amounts much greater than we can stop, especially since they’ve made trillions. We could take that tax money and end homelessness and addiction many times over because there would be a lot of money. Street gangs would lose a huge part of their revenue. Prohibition doesn’t work and we tried it with alcohol and look what happened!? Theres a reason they made it legal not long after making it illegal because the mafia was making tons of money bootlegging. Americans could buy guns same day a hundred years ago and could also go to a pharmacy to buy any type of drug they wanted and there wasn’t mass shootings nor mass drug addiction. The problem is much deeper and right now the ideas that are being created only help the drug cartels get bigger and more powerful. I would even say that some of these ideas are being pushed by the cartels because they have politicians in their pocket along with law enforcement. A big reason the war on drugs continues even though it’s been a massive failure is due to the jobs it’s created. Legalization of drugs would end the DEA and reduce funding to police departments and law enforcement. And criminals caught committing crimes while high should be punished more severely, forced rehab (we could afford it with the tax money), and criminals selling drugs would get even more severe treatment because of the danger of adultered street drugs. This system we’ve created is t working and we are only helping the cartels at this point which makes me absolutely furious. Pain patients can’t get their medication and it’s just getting crazy. People should have the freedom to put what they want in their bodies. Why isn’t the drug problem as bad or worse in Mexico where all the drugs come from? Think about that! Isn’t that odd.
Hey San Francisco…let’s DEFUND THE POLICE!! What happened to that plan?
Like most things the city citizens want, the powers in charge disagreed and withhold the requested changes. Exactly, zero places defunded the police and in almost every instance increased police funding, gutting other social services that could better use those funds.
SF is no different, they increased police pay rates while the unions all but confirmed the officers stopped working with Chesa as the DA. Well, we got Jenkins and as Mission Local reported the other day, violent crime rates have gone up under her leadership. So more police pay and a rightwing DA and higher crime followed. But at least they’re arresting drug users, I bet you’re thrilled about that one.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/06/one-year-after-recall-violent-crime-is-up-under-da-brooke-jenkins/
Taking analysis from academics at USF and UC-Berkeley is just listening in the NorCal echo chamber. If you want to talk about the real world, connect with Detroit and Memphis (the two blackest major US cities).
It is illegal to use drugs and killing our city to allow Our streets to be a welcoming place to set up a home anywhere for free and use drugs in front of residence, children, vacationers, and friends I often feel embarrassed taking anywhere. A lot of these people are crazy and will never agree to help. If you do drugs openly on the street of course you should go to jail and crazy people need to be forced into institutions. The status quo is not working
Why don’t they just arrest all the drug dealers?
Because then we wouldn’t have a working government. Who do you think the big drug dealers are, if not in government?
I think this article makes many good observations.
Locking up addicts and letting them die when they overdose after release should not be tolerated. That is like murder.
Addiction, complicated as it is, is still primarily a medical problem. Too many human beings, and quite visibly in San Francisco, are treated like animals.
We should all be ashamed by our current state of affairs– which is more a reflection of our society than of individual choices. It appears that we are at war with ourselves, stupidly grappling between altruism and self-interest.
We the people, through our government and democracy, should stop relying on non-profits and public-private partnerships to fix our problems. We do need wise leadership and real civic-engagement.
I am not an expert, but we should begin with clean beds and safe spaces for the sick and homeless to be while we sort things out. That should be the number one priority.
I see the same drug dealers all the time, moving from corner to corner. Can they be wiped out without spreading or being replaced, or without making our city more violent than it is already? We should ask ourselves, who in their right mind would like to make a living by selling deadly drugs?
“you get a temporary displacement and make it somebody else’s problem for a bit. And, you get whole bunch of death that would never have occurred otherwise.“
This makes it sound like the policies in place today aren’t causing death, which is far from the truth.
Please stop pushing these lies, Mission Local. Of course arrests won’t be the only solution, but it is exactly this progressive rhetoric that’s putting this beautiful city under siege.
The irony is palpable…
The rhetorical person with nothing to prove by rhetoric is telling an article that cites interviews and studies that one is holier than thou.
Oh, my white knight, in shining armor.
Here’s a thought: how about we stop encouraging people to come to SF to commit slow suicide on our streets? Too often “advocates” say “harm reduction” and it really sounds like “how am I gonna get high if my dealer is in jail?” We keep being told what “doesn’t work”. Well, turning the entire city into a drug-poisoned hellhole does not “work” either. Sure, offer treatment. Or provide a locked “safe” indoor space for addicts to kill themselves slowly away from the rest of us who want to live our lives in peace. But quit facilitating open drug use. It helps no one.
Maybe the “experts” should keep their opinions to themselves until they have suggestions other than coddling drug abusers, dealers and “under-housed” miscreants. ‘Cause that’s obviously been a dismal failure so might as well try something–anything new.
It’s not SF’s responsibility to house this country’s terminally addicted. If they’re not accepting treatment, keep them locked up. You can’t just roam around destroying our city.
Yes, most large U.S. cities are experiencing a drug abuse crisis but I find it difficult to believe that stricter law enforcement accomplishes absolutely nothing. Over the past 5 years I have visited NYC, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, L.A., Portland, Seattle, etc., the only cities where open air drug markets are totally out of control are on the West Coast. Believe it not, if you traffic dangerous drugs West of the Rockies in downtown business/tourist districts you are more than likely to get arrested, prosecuted on felony charges, and will spend time in jail or prison if they are repeat offenders. If someone is dealing drugs to pay for their drug habit they should be offered treatment as an alternative to jail/prison, but if they refuse such treatment they need to be locked up so they won’t prey on other addicts.
Correction: I meant East of the Rockies.
Of course this won’t be a sliver bullet for the economic “doom loop,” which has many contributing factors, but people are fed up. Most San Franciscans are compassionate people who want to live and let live and help those in need, but street conditions continue to deteriorate despite the $700 million we spend every year to supposedly fix the problems. The status quo has failed and we need to try new things. Some kind of balance needs to be restored.
Breed has to do something as her political ambitions/re-election are in jeopardy. Although she has a sizable war chest, I’m shocked others with ‘brand’ recognition have not thrown their hat in the ring. She is more vulnerable than ever and its easy to place the decline in QOL and the doom loop around her neck (the mayor that destroyed San Francisco). Safaí will dilute her vote tally – where are the others? I voted for her but she is obviously unqualified to do the job at hand.
Noone with half a brain seems to want the job these days. Neither to actually go fix things nor as a stepping stone.
Why do not do both. Arrests criminals and give other people the choice of clean injection sites, where they can test their drugs, or treatment. More testing should reduce the number of overdoses. Either way you are taking it off the streets and possibly preventing a lot of new addicts from taking it up. The public wants if off the streets and it doesn’t hurt to listen to them every now and then.
Thank you for this detailed and balanced reporting. I appreciated the case studies and various viewpoints. I have to agree with the other commentators that we need to consider the needs of the other 800k+ San Franciscans at this point – the current street conditions are not tenable and will kill downtown if allowed to continue. Homelessness and drug addiction are very complicated issues and I wish there were a way to find a mix of tactics that would be effective (probably both carrot and stick), so it’s a shame that this will become politicized because that probably makes it harder to find a sensible solution that is compassionate as well.
Years ago, I was at my mother in law’s, a sweet 80yr old Filipino lady, She had been in the USA for about 10yrs. In that time Duterte had come to power and had authorized his police to execute people they saw dealing drugs right on the street. There was a viral video of Cops literally pushing young kids to their knees and shooting them in the head right in the road.
I asked her what she thought about it. Her response, “Well, he has a very big problem with drugs and someone had to do something about it”.
This sweet little lady was totally ok with road-side executions of kids by cops who were probably little more than kids themselves.
That is where many of San Franciscans feel we are. They just don’t care anymore. They want the scene cleaned up and they really don’t care how it’s done. The facts and statistics show jailing them simply makes it works, but it sure makes a lot of people feel like “something is being done”
If a cart does not move, do you whip the cart? Or do you whip the oxen?
There are four types of oxen: the one who – seeing the whip – responds immediately; the second who – hearing the whip – then responds; the third who – feeling a taste of the whip – begins to pull; and the fourth who – after repeated lashings – finally begins pulling.
I might also cite a fifth one: the one who is never presented with the whip. The result is that the cart never moves.
How about you put the wants of homeless junkies on hold for 5 minutes and focus on the NEEDS of productive citizens of the city?? San Francisco is a dumpster fire. No regular person wants anything to do with that living nightmare of denial and insane policies.
Why is the author so concerned about reducing the suffering of these addict parasites? You need to increase their suffering. Its called negative reinforcement. You earn reduced suffering.
The only thing in San Francisco’s future, is more drug addled bums. The “progressive” seeds have sprouted and its all toxic and destructive.
Going after dealers, the distribution network, the source, must be very hard, because it isn’t even mentioned. Two things I know: drugs aren’t free, and the wrong people are getting dangerously rich. Fight or flight is the proper reaction, and the state has removed all fight. See you in the east of whatever.
>Any real impact, said Ayoob, would come from arresting the “guys at the top” and sellers who also use drugs, not buyers. This was also the conclusion of a 2021 report from San Francisco’s Street Level Drug Dealing Task Force, which was put together by the board of supervisors and mayor in 2019.
Uh. Yeah, they did mention it.
Talked to everyone except the people who matter. Us, the general public that will make or break downtown. I speak for many when I say YES, enforcing the law will draw me and my family back to Downtown San Francisco.
“if the goal is to sweep drug use from public view, then there is an outside chance a wave of arrests could work” – regardless of whether this is “the” goal, it is a worthy goal. Understood they may be a downside of an uptick in overdoses. But there is also an upside in that the quality of life for 99.9% of the citizenry will be greatly improved. On balance, this approach would seem to be worth a try. I would prefer safe injection sites – you can shoot up drugs here but nowhere else or you’ll be arrested. But that is a tough one politically and legally, so arresting those who engage in this criminal behavior in public seems like the best available option.
I agree with those that state that decisive action is needed. The dealers must be pursued vigorously. Some of the addictive may suffer. But that is a consequence that cannot be avoided. Time is running out. Doing nothing will not alleviate the problem. We who used to inhabit and use the City for business and entertainment are not likely to continue to do so until these matters are resolved. Empathy and sympathy for the addicted must be balanced with the need to bring the City back for the rest of the citizens.
thanks for this important comment, B.
we can never EVER return to the failed war on drugs! and arresting drug users just perpetuates systemic racism and the prison pipeline for Black men.
if you advocate for arresting persons suffering the trauma of racism and disenfranchisement, you are a heartless racist. PERIOD.
another ‘war on the poor’ approach for those too poor to afford a nightclub (or home) to consume their drug of choice. we’re back to the 1990’s: crack versus cocaine.
it seems this well positioned ‘attorney’ supports allowing the death of more addicts if it helps her ‘zonor get re-elected and the schitty look good for tourists.
you are diminishing the value of a life simply for a behavioral disorder.
Ah yes, a worthy goal of repeating a catastrophic mistake that’s actually ineffective throughout the past half century, then over-promise a 99.9% quality of life that never and will never happen.
Then go subtly that we should let people die.
The city services are declining and ineffective, the leader isn’t leading effective policy and paying lip service, and yet here we are impaling on the same spike like sheep every election year of “Let’s try the War on Drugs again!”.
What a cliche.
The clock is ticking, the APEC summit is coming to town in November. And just like years ago (DNC convention), they’re going to clean up shop around town. In honesty, the current situation is 100% not presentable, and things are more precarious today when you’re going to have journalists looking to take breathless videos on their iPhones like that fellow from BBC did a couple years back. A good look would reflect positively on Breed’s political ambition, and she can bank on ppl fed up hearing from civil rights experts and harm reduction perpetrators. All in all, I’ll judge this by what happens after November.
Switching gears, it seems to get lost this is aiming at totally passed out folk. Was wondering how much mileage one can expect “at a club” between unfurling your aluminum foil and laying draped across the dance floor