Good intentions are killing people in San Francisco

In today's NY Times: San Francisco Contends With a Different Sort of Epidemic: Drug Deaths.

The drugs killed them in plain view — in front of the public library, at the spot on Powell Street where the cable car used to turn around. Others died alone in single-room apartments or in camping tents pitched on the pavement, each death adding to an overdose crisis that is one of the worst in the nation.Drug overdoses rose across the country during the coronavirus pandemic. 

But in San Francisco, they skyrocketed, claiming 713 lives last year, more than double the 257 people here who died of the virus in 2020. San Francisco’s overdose death rate is higher than West Virginia, the state with the most severe crisis, and three times the rates of New York and Los Angeles. 

Although overdose data from the past year is incomplete, one researcher found that San Francisco — where overdoses have more than tripled since 2017 — has more overdoses per capita than any major city on the West Coast. 

The drug deaths in San Francisco — about two a day — stem from a confluence of despair. Fentanyl, an opioid that was not a severe problem for the city just a few years ago, has fully permeated its illicit drug market and was a factor in most overdoses last year. 

A culture of relative tolerance toward drug use has allowed it to spread quickly. And fentanyl, much more powerful than heroin, has found fertile ground among the city’s thousands of homeless residents, who have died of overdoses in large numbers....

In a widely-ignored post two years ago (Arrest anyone who shoots up on city streets), I advocated changing the clearly failed "harm reduction" policy on public drug use by adding crucial tough love to both reduce public squalor and save lives.

Shoot up in public in San Francisco? That's a bust. Go directly to jail where you take part in a drug program---or you can kick cold turkey in jail if you choose.

The "relative tolerance" approach is in effect enabling people to kill themselves in the city. 

City Hall and city progressives should ponder the implications of the old saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." (Good intentions and unintended consequences)

This mentality undermined the city's approach to homelessness from the beginning of that now chronic social problem. Gee, these poor folks have a housing problem. Well, yes. But those of us with eyes could see that many homeless had visible and crippling drug and/or emotional issues.

Ignoring that reality, city progressives focused on housing, that the solution to homelessness simply requires more affordable housing, a half-truth that ignored the drug and mental health aspects of the problem.

See also Oh Gavin, you're such a bitch! from 2005 and San Francisco, Hostage to the Homeless.