San Francisco ties welfare to drug-screening, boosts police powers in stunning tough-on-crime shift
San Francisco ties welfare to drug-screening, boosts police powers in stunning tough-on-crime shift
In a bid to address the city's drug crisis — and the crime and homelessness that come with it — San Francisco voters shifted right in Tuesday's primary, approving ballot measures that aim to boost enforcement powers.
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Drug treatment is important, yes, but making it a precondition for benefits will absolutely hurt the most vulnerable. If there was actually enough affordable housing available for everyone that needs it, there would be far less of a need for this kind of policy. It is well documented that providing housing before anything else sets people up for success. If someone has been living on the streets and suddenly has housing available, their life will improve so drastically thanks to the job and social opportunities that will become available, also making it less likely that drug abuse will continue.
This seems like a cop out to me. Just build houses for fuck’s sake.
Breed has been on the wrong side of so many issues. Most recently she made an incredibly tone-deaf statement denouncing the city council’s vote against the genocide in Gaza. I’m done with her.
https://voterguide.sfelections.org/local-ballot-measures/measure-a
This affordable housing measure also passed in the same election, for what it's worth.
Thanks for the heads up. Yeah, I’m cautiously hopeful, but still quite skeptical they’ll get it right. These measures often sound good, but implementation is key.
Yeah I feel the same, cautiously hopeful. It seems like the implementation always gets bogged down with corruption, red tape and fingerpointing in this city...
The thing is, they don't want drug users to have houses. Sad but true
How would (forced) addiction treatment hurt the most vulnerable?
For one thing, it's extremely difficult to force someone out of an addiction. You usually have to want to quit in order for that to be an option. Otherwise you have to do something like torture them by making them go through a possibly extremely painful cold turkey withdrawal.
So I'd say torturing the most vulnerable would hurt them.
But what makes you think that's what they'll do? Would helping someone with an addiction towards treatment really 'torture' them?
Breed’s office has said the measure was intentionally designed to be flexible on the treatment component. Treatment options could range from out-patient services to a prescription for buprenorphine, a medication used to treat addiction. They noted it doesn’t include a requirement for participants to remain sober, recognizing that people often lapse in recovery and shouldn’t be kicked out of the program for a slip-up.
Thank you! People here getting all riled up without even reading the damn article. What else is new?
I am SO TIRED of articles about SF ending up in a national or global forum where people start complaining about stuff that SF is light years ahead on.
You asked about forced addiction treatment. Not this specific program.
There are a lot of times people are forced to have addiction treatment, especially by judges. And it is a form of torture.
Ok, fair enough. But I don't think many treatment programs still make them go cold turkey though. Of course it's always 'less fun' than just continuing shooting fentanyl, even for those who freely make the change
What? You think fentanyl addicts use it for fun? They probably didn't even start using opioids for fun. They probably started because they were in pain.
Also, if they stop using opioids they will be in a lot more pain and they will still be living in America, where a for-profit medical system to treat that pain is beyond their reach.
It's not about fun at all. What an incredibly insensitive thing to say.
If they don't get help to stop, they eventually progress to a point where they are definitely not using for fun. They have no choice anymore. They have one goal and that is to be high at any cost. I work in a part of SF where there are a lot of them and the things I see them go through are horrendous. It feels like watching state sanctioned torture. They are literally being left to rot. I know two people that have lost a loved one to fentanyl and it really is heartbreaking.
Again- many fentanyl addicts are people in actual physical pain. The whole reason there is an opioid epidemic in the first place is that opioids used to be handed out by doctors like candy and tons of people got addicted.
Claiming they're doing it for fun is simply insensitive and you should ask those two people why they lost those loved ones- what got them addicted in the first place.
I've had fentanyl in a hospital. It's not something pleasurable.
Jeez yeah thankfully I've never had to experience fent myself. I did get some Molly one time that was cut with meth, and that was a huge eye opener for me... different drug but still.
I do know the back story to one of the victims. He was just a dude that got caught up in the party scene too much. Was always using more and more as time went on. People even told him he was going to die someday. Sure enough, he had another party at his place, and in the early morning, people found him lying on the floor of his room, partially in a closet, dead. Fentanyl OD.
As if that wasn't bad enough, some of the people came back and took shit from his house after they learned he died. Ugh
I have spoken to some on the street though that did indeed get hooked originally from a pain script. It's definitely a thing.
Are you saying no-one is using opiates recreationally? Or that people get addicted because it makes them feel so incredibly bad? People I know that dose some special K at a festival don't really do so to ease their back pain...
I'm saying that the current opioid crisis was caused by people in legitimate physical pain being oversupplied opioids by doctors due to companies like Purdue Pharma pushing them on doctors. So a large number of fentanyl addicts are taking it because they have legitimate pain issues which also need to be addressed.
beyond that forced treatment is ethically questionable, conditioning other forms of help on sobriety puts people in a bind. it's hard for people to get and stay sober when they're suffering, physically and mentally.
housing/food/health care (to include mental health and psychiatric care) first means it's more likely that efforts toward sobriety will even work.
conditioning other forms of help on sobriety puts people in a bind.
This bill explicitly does not do that.
Forced addiction treatment isn't what's happening. They drug test the poor and then cut them off from benefits if they fail. It is a punishment.
The only way to be eligible for benefits again is to join a treatment program, many of which in the US are just religious ministries that care more about proselytizing than human outcomes. Even cults like the Church of Scientology runs drug treatment programs, with obvious motivations...
These people are exploited by pretty much everyone, including those who are tasked to help them. If your solution is to force them into anything, recovery or otherwise, you're just exploiting them further.
From the article:
Breed’s office has said the measure was intentionally designed to be flexible on the treatment component. Treatment options could range from out-patient services to a prescription for buprenorphine, a medication used to treat addiction. They noted it doesn’t include a requirement for participants to remain sober, recognizing that people often lapse in recovery and shouldn’t be kicked out of the program for a slip-up.
You really need to read the article
Given that neither her nor the council have anything to do with policy in Gaza and that both are going to be making statements purely to aim to appeal to chunks of the electorate, does it make sense to condition your vote on that?
If you were choosing a dentist, would you use their stated positions on the Levant to do so?
I'm not a San Francisco resident, so I don't get a vote, I just have lots of connections to the region. She didn't have to denounce the city council's resolution against the genocide, she chose to, and that felt like a gut punch to me at the time. As for the relevance of it all, it was a non-binding (obviously) resolution taking a moral stand on an issue directly impacting hundreds if not thousands of residents in a pretty small city, so it matters.
I take your point, but if I asked my dentist if they thought it was okay to indiscriminately kill tens of thousands of children because they were born on the wrong side of a border, and they said yes? I'd absolutely find a different doctor.
Now I'm imagining a binding resolution on Gaza lol
Representatives of the City of San Francisco being legally required to go try to negotiate a cease fire, per city mandate
If I had a dentist who told me that they were okay with tens of thousands of children being murdered? Yeah, I might worry about their compassion as a healthcare provider.