Mayor Daniel Lurie continues to look for more ways to arrest drug users, and the latest is a forced “sobering center.” The evidence is pretty clear that forced sobriety doesn’t work (although safe-injections sites, which the mayor is not proposing, do).
Former Sup. Dean Preston points out on Bluesky that the city’s policies on the unhoused these days are remarkably similar to an executive order issued by Donald Trump called “ending disorder on America’s streets.” It includes:
The Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation shall take immediate steps to assess their discretionary grant programs and determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet the below criteria, to the maximum extent permitted by law:
(i) enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use;
(ii) enforce prohibitions on urban camping and loitering;
(iii) enforce prohibitions on urban squatting;
(iv) enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves, through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law …
Ensure that discretionary grants issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery fund evidence-based programs and do not fund programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called “harm reduction” or “safe consumption” efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm.
Charles Lutvak, the mayor’s press person, told me that Lurie never discussed this with Trump during their phone call.
But San Francisco is adopting many of those approaches, and is moving away from harm reduction, and if polling I’m hearing about it true, there’s a move to scrap parts of the Sanctuary City Ordinance. Nato Green posted on Facebook a poll that is in the field, which includes the following:
I don’t know who is doing the poll, but it also asks about an issue that is a priority of Sup. Matt Dorsey:
I texted Dorsey but haven’t heard back yet.
But if the city is starting to move toward Trump policies, perhaps this should be an issue in the current Congressional race and in all of the supes races.
