A Drug Use Site on Your Block?

The City Employees Who Are Trying to Make That Happen

- woman passed out with fentanyl straw in mouth, outside now defunct Linkage Center, San Francisco California

As a resident of any city or town, you most likely know who the mayor is as well as council members or supervisors. They were up for election, and you may have supported and voted for them. You may also be able to evoke the names and faces of the chief of police and district attorney. All are the figures who give speeches, make large-scale appearances, and propose new pieces of legislation.They make decisions that impact your life. If they don’t perform, they just may face a recall. 

But who else has a direct affect on your community, business, family, and home? The civil servants who are not so widely known. Many are activists masquerading as experts who are making decisions that negatively impact the city at large. Moreover, they're failing to help the people they are paid to help. In San Francisco, they are the Department of Public Health (DPH) employees who are trying to open drug use sites all over the city. 

Say its Name: Drug Use Site

There are various ways to describe drug use sites. They’re often referred to as “overdose prevention centers” “wellness hubs,” or “safe consumption sites.” Such euphemisms are false and deceptive:

• Drug overdoses aren’t prevented. The workers may revive a person with Narcan or call for an ambulance, but people regularly overdose in the sites and when they leave, overdose outside of them. 

• “Wellness” is a marketing term.These are not hospital settings designed to help people overcome their addiction, or get physically and psychologically better.

• Safety is a myth. There is no safe recreational way to consume drugs like meth and fentanyl. The emerging crop of highly addictive and far stronger substances such as Isotonitazene (ISO) and Xylazine (Tranq) make overdose reversals more difficult if not impossible. 

Therefore I reference these places as government sanctioned drug use sites. DPH calls them wellness hubs. 

Size Didn't Matter. Performance Did.

As has now been universally documented, the Linkage Center located in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza was an abject disaster. Originally touted as a place for homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill people to get connected to key services, it ended up as a filthy, chaotic drug use site. It was run on the sly by HealthRIGHT360 (in collaboration with DPH), as decided by the organization’s president and CEO Vitka Eisen. 

The troubled area surrounding the Center descended as squalor and crime intensified. Drug dealers were prolific, which made perfect sense since that’s where the users were.

Few, if any, residents would choose to have the Center on their doorstep. When Mayor London Breed finally shut it down in December 2022, locals rejoiced. Good riddance to a bad idea. 

The Drug Use Site Pushers

Since the Center’s closure there has been no rallying cry from San Franciscans to open replacements. Nor have the people on the street who are suffering from addiction been asking for drug use sites. 

Yet there is a plan to open many smaller versions of the same failed Center all over the city. Mayor Breed is supporting dug use sites, and Hillary Ronen is the primary advocate on the board of supervisors. But it is the public health department, with its approximately $3 billion budget, that is aggressively pushing to open them.

The DPH employees leading the effort are Dr. Jeffrey Hom, director Population Behavioral Health and Eileen Loughran, overdose prevention and community health initiatives manager. On three separate occasions I reached out to DPH to request an interview with both or either but was told that they would be unable to meet my request. 

These individuals are not elected into their positions. Even the most engaged San Franciscans may not know who they are. However, without community approval, their intention is to open twelve drug use sites throughout the city. 

If anything should be up for a vote, a proposed drug use site in your neighborhood is it. In the event it were to appear on a ballot, odds are extremely high it would perish at the polls. 

In January, 2023, Hom and Loughran attended a community meeting about declining qualify of life issues. Hundreds showed up, livid about the worsening condition of their neighborhood. They spoke of chaos, criminal activity, vagrancy and open drug use. 

When the Linkage Center was held up as an example of failure and grift. Loughran made a peculiar comment. The issue, she explained, was not what the Center did but its footprint. It was simply too big. 

Therefore, if the problem was that the drug use site was outsized, the answer is to shrink them and to open them all over the city. These city employees didn’t mention this part of the plan to the crowd. If they did, the stage surely would have been stormed. 

The Past is a Predictor of the Future

The first of these drug use sites are slated to open in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods. These communities have been neglected and turned into a hellish containment zone for residents who have a hard time fighting back. They are the poor, the disabled, senior citizens and recent immigrants. Historically, their voices have been muted. 

It’s also where people who have severe drug and mental illness problems are already. Instead of providing them with real help in the form of clinical care, though, the ideologues opt for ever more extreme and unsuccessful versions of harm reduction. DPH does not actively promote abstinence-based treatment. Recovery is barely mentioned. 

According to DPH’s plan, the “wellness hubs” will be identical to the failed, shuttered Linkage Center.

So what could you expect if a drug use site were to open on your block? The same crime, vagrancy, and open drug use as what occurred in the first iteration. As for the site participants, its a place to hang out and use, not improve their circumstances. A mere 3 percent were connected to services, and of that percentage a tiny fraction received treatment for their addiction.

Meanwhile San Francisco, already in a painful economic place, will continue to bleed money. The projected price for the initial six drug use sites is $90 million, not including operation costs. 

There would be beneficiaries, of course. DPH - Hom and Loughran’s employers - would be involved in running these sites.  

Hold Decision-Makers Responsible 

Every resident should be acutely aware of the individuals who are attempting to influence the direction of their community. This is especially true when those people end up causing extreme damage. Just as you know the names and images of politicians and other leaders, the responsible city workers should also immediately come to mind. 

If you are a San Franciscan and do not want to have a drug use site opening in your or any neighborhood, tell them. Contact DPH. Dr. Hillary Kunins is the program’s director. Demand real clinical care for people who are in terrible mental and physical condition and who are dying of overdose at a rate of nearly two per day. Call your district supervisor and the mayor. This is your city. 

San Francisco Department of Public Health employees: Dr. Hillary Kunins, behavioral health director, Dr. Jeffery Hom director Population Behavioral Health, Eileen Loughran, overdose prevention and community health initiatives manager.