The ‘hurt discount’ model failed on drugs in San – Latest News
In San Francisco, the so-called “harm-reduction” methodology of coping with drug habit is on the best way out — and thank goodness. The lenient method, which coddled drug addicts, solely made the issue worse.
The National Harm Reduction Coalition defines “harm reduction” as “reducing negative consequences associated with drug use,” fairly than combating drug use itself. It can also be “a movement for social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.”
Harm discount activists had been as soon as the darlings of City Hall. They started with noble intentions in the Nineteen Eighties, when the HIV/AIDS disaster led the activists to suggest assembly drug addicts “where they’re at.”
In San Francisco, the so-called “harm-reduction” methodology of coping with drug habit is on the best way out. Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
The downside was that letting addicts be addicts additionally meant leaving them on the streets to deteriorate and die.
Today hurt discount is in a public-relations free fall. Politicians don’t wish to assist it; Residents hate it.
Of course, the philosophy sounded interesting on paper. Don’t be judgmental. The phrase “addict” is stigmatizing; use “substance use disorder” as a substitute. Wait, did you say somebody is getting “clean”? That implies customers are soiled. Everyone is ok. That man face-down on the sidewalk simply wants Narcan and a free home.
And don’t you dare introduce such ideas as restoration, sobriety, and abstinence. That woman on a three-day meth binge will come to that conclusion on her own, if she chooses and when she’s good and prepared. Which could also be by no means, however no matter. Pharmaceutical-grade drugs, aka “safer supply,” will help too. Users simply need to know the place the drugs come from, how to check them, how to keep their drug instruments to themselves, and how to celebration with buddies.
Today hurt discount is in a public-relations free fall. Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
When put into motion, hurt discount rules failed miserably. They actually didn’t “reduce harm.” It seems practices like allotting drug-supply paraphernalia by the vanful — from fentanyl foil to crack pipes — made lives and communities worse, not higher.
San Franciscans witnessed the ruinous impact of such insurance policies in actual time. Harm discount created large and intractable open-air drug scenes; lured hundreds of homeless drug vacationers into town; and intensified habit. Already troubled areas just like the Tenderloin and the Mission had been delivered to their knees with virtually unimaginable crime and squalor.
Locally, hurt discount peaked in 2023. That was the 12 months we had essentially the most overdose deaths on file, at 810 fatalities. Enough was an excessive amount of.
Then-Mayor London Breed — an ardent harm-reduction proponent who needed to set up formal drug-use websites (even having a de facto one in the Civic Center, which was a whole catastrophe) — misplaced the election to Daniel Lurie in 2024.
San Franciscans witnessed the ruinous impact of such insurance policies in actual time. Marjorie Hernandez / NY Post
Lurie’s administration marked the start of the tip of hurt discount tradition. His Breaking the Cycle plan, unveiled in March 2025, eroded what was as soon as a stronghold: City-funded nonprofit organizations giving drug provides to drug addicts in the locations the place they congregate. Now such gadgets can solely be supplied at sanctioned brick-and-mortar websites and have to be paired with details about counseling and restoration.
The struggling carries on, although. Between 2020 and 2025 alone, 4,090 people died of unintentional drug overdoses in San Francisco. Nearly one in 4 of these deaths occurred inside town’s community of roughly 9,000 “Permanent Supportive Housing” items, practically all of that are drug-tolerant buildings. The lethal fentanyl scourge continues to rage. Dealers keep flooding town, as even when arrested they face little to no repercussions.
The hellish drama taking part in out in full view has its roots in the harm-reduction motion. Its adherents imagine that criminalizing public drug exercise is flawed.
Although proof of such extreme unfavorable outcomes hasn’t swayed essentially the most ardent harm-reduction promoters, they realize it’s underneath assault. Financial assist has dried up, and proponents no longer have a assured seat on the desk.
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In 2025 the Trump administration issued “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” an government order that directed Health and Human Services companies to stop funding hurt discount and safe-consumption efforts. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) adopted, barring federal grant funds from going towards syringes for illicit drug injection, pipes, and safer-smoking kits.
On July 29, Mayor Lurie signed Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s laws to make sure drug-free housing items can be found. Groups just like the Coalition on Homelessness fought the ordinance, however may solely whimper when it handed.
This doesn’t imply the activists will go extinct. Instead, they may merely change to a different radical, but more welcoming atmosphere — maybe LA.
My prediction is that the majority will redirect their frenetic vitality into the most recent trend: socialism. The majority are already on the exhausting left anyway, so the match is natural.
Expect much less rhetoric about “loving drug users” and waning ardour for distributing baggies of foil and pipes, and more fervent participation in organizations just like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Socialism, too, looks as if a exhausting behavior to interrupt.
Erica Sandberg is an unbiased journalist masking personal finance and present affairs.
