San Francisco Admits Giving Free Alcohol and Drugs to Homeless Hotel 'Guests'
In San Francisco, the homeless aren’t just boarding in hotels for free — they’re getting free booze to boot.
That was the message from the city’s public health department in recent days after a social media user who describes himself as a “formerly homeless addict” posted a Twitter comment criticizing the practice.
“I just found out that homeless placed in hotels in SF are being delivered Alcohol, Weed and Methadone because they identified as an addict/alcoholic for FREE,” the user “T Wolf” wrote on Friday. “You’re supposed to be offering treatment. This is enabling and is wrong on many levels.”
Clearly, T Wolf isn’t as enlightened as the sages of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
I just found out that homeless placed in hotels in SF are being delivered Alcohol, Weed and Methadone because they identified as an addict/alcoholic for FREE. You’re supposed to be offering treatment. This is enabling and is wrong on many levels. @SF_DPH @sfbos @LondonBreed
— T Wolf (@MyTwolffamily) May 2, 2020
In a Twitter response on Tuesday, as The Daily Caller reported, the city’s health department essentially admitted the truth of the statement, then patronizingly explained that giving free booze and drugs to the homeless who are already being given a roof over their heads are accepted “harm reduction based practices.”
It added, mysteriously enough, that the materials “are not paid for with taxpayer money.”
These harm reduction based practices, which are not unique to San Francisco, and are not paid for with taxpayer money, help guests successfully complete isolation and quarantine and have significant individual and public health benefits in the COVID-19 pandemic.
— SFDPH (@SF_DPH) May 5, 2020
Liberals love the fungibility of money — it gives them a way to argue ideas like giving free booze to alcoholics are fine as long as they’re not paid for directly with taxpayers dollars.
What public functionaries usually fail to mention, however, is that everything they do is at heart made possible by taxpayer dollars.
In this case, it doesn’t particularly matter where the exact dollars for a particular amount of alcohol came from — whether the booze is being delivered by a staffer for a nonprofit that receives city funding, for instance, or from a foundation that’s supported by liberal donors who write their gifts off on their taxes.
It’s all part of a city program that is, by definition, paid for with tax dollars.
More important than accounting columns, though, is the blindingly obvious fact that supplying alcoholics with alcohol is a bad idea. Period. Full stop.
Supplying alcoholics alcohol for free while putting them up in free hotel rooms, is a worse idea even if it does “help guests successfully complete isolation and quarantine.”
It’s worth noting that the post by “T Wolf” also mentions “Weed,” and the health department’s response does nothing to dispel the idea.
The only conclusion to draw from that is that homeless drug users in San Francisco are, in fact, not only being supplied with free hotel rooms and alcohol, but marijuana, too.
That means a public agency — no mattter what California state lawmakers have decided — is acting as at least a facilitator in the delivery of a drug that’s illegal under federal law.
They call this “harm reduction” in San Francisco? It’s “enabling” on steroids.
The response to the health department’s defense couldn’t have been what the department was looking for. But when a relentlessly liberal government and culture have taken a heart-achingly beautiful city and turned it into a cesspool, it might be hard for public employees to realize how inane they actually sound.
This is, after all, the home city of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Indeed. The ‘benefits’ of your approach are obvious. The streets have never been safer or cleaner and OD’s are practically a thing of the past. Hopefully you don’t tire of all your success. We need to ensure addicts, from far and wide, continue getting their free fix here in SF.
— john perri (@jnperri) May 5, 2020
Are you serious? Who is paying for it? Who is paying for the salaries of those carrying this out? Who is paying for the hotel stay? Can we apply if we lose our home?!?!
— AGPM (@agpma42) May 6, 2020
And people wonder why SF has become a magnet for transients from all across the state and beyond. Free hotel rooms with room service that includes booze and weed. Wow! Just wow!
— Gale Connor (@GaleConnor5) May 5, 2020
But this one put it perfectly:
What the San Francisco Dept of Public Health is doing, enabling addicts and giving them drugs and alcohol with OUR TAXPAYER MONEY is SHAMEFUL…
Shame on you for lying and making the problem worse to ensure your gravy train of money.#FollowTheMoney#HomelessIndustrialComplex— SF Conservative (@SF_Conservative) May 5, 2020
There’s no doubt that many, many Americans struggle with drug addiction — particularly alcohol, the second-most common addiction in the United States behind tobacco, according to experts in the field.
There’s also no doubt that cossetting addicts with free hotel rooms and free access to their drug of choice — booze or whatever — is pretty well guaranteed to have an ending that helps nobody, except maybe the city staffers whose salaries are paid with taxpayer dollars in a city that seems to grow more lawless with every passing year.
And if they ever find themselves really down on their luck, a free bed and a bottle might not be that far away.
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