San Francisco set up its Managed Alcohol Program (MAP) in 2020 as part of its COVID-19 response, to keep “homeless” people out of jails and emergency rooms.     

Public health officials say that alcohol is given out by nurses, who give regimented doses of beer and vodka at certain points throughout the day, depending on a person’s specific care plan.

A typical San Francisco scene

Attorney Laura Powell damned the program on X, writing: “San Francisco’s managed alcohol program provides homeless alcoholics with housing, meals, activities (including crafts and outings to Giants games), and a quantity of alcoholic beverages determined by their ‘need and desire,’ with no expectation of reducing consumption.

“With a reported budget of $5 million for 20 beds (half set aside for Latinx or indigenous people), it would be cheaper to accommodate these people in all-inclusive resorts.”

San Francisco officials claim the program saves taxpayer money by reducing calls to emergency services.

But the San Francisco Chronicle found that, in July 2022, five alcoholics in the program needed ambulance transportation at least 1,727 times in a period of five years, costing the taxpayer $4 million.

Another critic of the program is addiction specialist Amara Durham: “Where’s the medical supervision for when someone does hit that tipping point and they have been over-served because they happen to come in and get their last drink that takes them over the edge from this facility?”

Perhaps the best way to evaluate the effectiveness of the Managed Alcohol Program is this: Since 2020, it has served just 55 clients. 

Meanwhile, store owners are being forced to literally pay the price for San Francisco’s failed policies on “the homeless.”

On June 18, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors slapped a midnight-to-5-a.m. curfew on food markets and tobacco businesses in the city’s latest attempt to prevent drug abuse in the crime-ridden Tenderloin district.

But restaurants, bars and non-retail businesses are exempt. Stores can be fined up to $1,000 for each hour they operate in violation of the ordinance. 

So what can San Francisco do to effectively combat the drug- and alcohol-related plagues of Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums (DDMBs)?

They can recognize that the United States Supreme Court has finally supplied at least a partial answer to this problem.

“Homeless” tents lined up toward City Hall

On June 28, the Court, in City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson, empowered cities to enforce laws prohibiting camping and vagrancy.

On September 28, 2018, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had issued Martin v. City of Boise. This held that “the Eighth Amendment prohibits the imposition of criminal penalties for sitting, sleeping, or lying outside on public property for homeless individuals who cannot obtain shelter.” 

People could be evicted only if beds or shelter were available to those who were being evicted.

The Supreme Court’s ruling overrides that decision, stating that the Eighth Amendment does not prevent a municipality from evicting homeless people from public spaces. Now dozens of Western cities are armed with greater enforcement powers to keep those spaces open and safe for everyone.

As a result, communities nationwide can fine, ticket or arrest DDMBs. But they aren’t forced to take any specific actions or to actively engage in criminal punishment.

Given the extent of the “homeless” plague facing San Francisco, the city could—and should—impose the following reforms:

• Launch a “Please Do Not Feed the Bums” publicity campaign—as it has against feeding pigeons. And those caught doing so should be heavily fined. 
• Trash cans should be equipped with locked doors, to prevent bums from using them as food dispensers.
• Those living on the street should be given two choices: Go to a local shelter or face arrest and the immediate confiscation of their possessions;
• An “Untermenschen City” should be set up near the city dump. There they can live in their tents and/or sleeping bags while being unable to daily confront or assault others to obtain free money.
• San Francisco’s rent control laws should be strengthened, to prevent future evictions owing to the unchecked greed of landlords. Tenants on fixed incomes should be given special protections against extortionate rent increases.
• Bus drivers should be able to legally refuse passengers who stink of urine/feces, as they present a potential health-hazard to others.
• The owners of restaurants, theaters and grocery stores should likewise be allowed to refuse service on the same basis.
• Those applying for welfare benefits should be required to provide proof of residence. Too many people come to San Francisco because, upon arrival, they can immediately apply for such benefits.
• Set up a special unit to remove “street people” and their possessions from city sidewalks. This could be a division of the Sanitation Department, since its personnel are used to removing filth and debris of all types.
• Forcefully tell alcoholics, drug addicts and bums: “Your anti-social behavior is not welcome here. Take your self-destructive lifestyles elsewhere. We won’t subsidize them.”

It may not be perfect, but it will certainly go further to clean up the drug- and alcohol-soaked Tenderloin than any program now on the books.

And it will not penalize those who are struggling to make a living as they brave long hours, often hostile customers, and the ever-present threat of armed robbery.

In San Francisco, if your house is infested with bedbugs, don’t get rid of the bedbugs—close down the house.    

Proof of this came on June 18, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved legislation to place a curfew on food markets and tobacco businesses in the city’s latest attempt at preventing drug abuse in the crime-ridden Tenderloin district. 

San Francisco’s Tenderloin district is about 50 square blocks in size, with a population of around 35,000 people. It’s bordered on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. 

The Tenderloin

The new curfew rules will prevent businesses in the Tenderloin selling “prepackaged food or tobacco products from operating” between midnight and 5 a.m. 

“The drug markets happening at night in this neighborhood are unacceptable and must be met with increased law enforcement and new strategies, but this must be done in partnership with community, which we are doing,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said.

The legislation is designed as a two-year pilot program, according to the press release, and will be enforced by fines from the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) and investigation from the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).

The legislation does not apply to restaurants, bars, or non-retail businesses, such as event halls. Fines can be levied for up to $1,000 for each hour a store operates in violation of the ordinance. 

The curfew program targets these businesses that, “in effect, facilitate the late night-time drug market by providing a lighted gathering point,” according to the legislation.

Some local businesses are saying if they take a loss in revenue or jobs, they want the city to offer financial mitigation, such as a reduction in fees. 

Residents appear divided about the effectiveness of the legislation.

“That’s backwards,” said Abdul Malik Muhammad, about allowing liquor stores to remain open past midnight. “Those are the stores that should be shut down, I believe.” 

Wallie, one of the owners of Plaza Snacks and Delli at 7th and McAllister street, said: “That’s not gonna make any difference, I guarantee you. I’ve been here for 20 years. They just move them from one block to the next.” 

“Some of the stores are like magnets, and they attract problems,” said Muhammad. He accused some store owners of price-gouging their low-income customers.

Many residents feel imprisoned in their own homes “when the sun goes down,” several business organizations wrote the city. They speak of drug sales in the open, rapes, murders and shootings with human waste left in the wake.

Yet much of this can be traced directly to the city’s open door welcome to those euphemistically termed as “the homeless.” The vast majority of these fall into four major groups: Drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill and those who refuse to work.

In short: DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums.

Another casualty of booze or drugs

“Our challenges still occur at night,” said Assistant Chief David Lazar. “Crowds of people that are there selling stolen property, selling narcotics. We have drug users all over. And the problem is that when you have businesses that are open, like liquor stores and smoke shops, it just attracts more people.”

A study by WalletHub, a personal finance company, recently found that San Francisco was the “worst run” city in the United States. The study measured the “effectiveness of local leadership” by comparing the quality of city services matched against the city’s total budget to determine its operating efficiency.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Breed’s office defended the mayor’s policy actions to reduce drug use in San Francisco:

“Mayor Breed has taken aggressive steps to shut down open-air drug markets and that is why she established the Drug Market Agency Coordination Center (DMACC) in May 2023, activating resources across the City to dismantle the illegal drug markets in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods.

“Since May 28, 2023, SFPD has seized over 225 kilos of narcotics and made more than 3,400 arrests related to drug activity in these neighborhoods, including more than 1,400 drug dealers and over 1,500 drug users arrested. For fentanyl seizures, over 77 million lethal doses have been seized since the start of DMACC.”

And while city officials laud their efforts to “crack down” on drug use, the city operates a second program to provide vodka or beer to “homeless” people struggling with severe alcohol addiction.

The city set up its Managed Alcohol Program (MAP) in 2020 as part of its COVID-19 response, to keep “homeless” people out of jails and emergency rooms.

Adam Nathan, chair of the Salvation Army’s advisory board in San Francisco, posted on X that he recently “stumbled across”  the former hotel from which the program operates:

“It’s set up so people in the program just walk in and grab a beer, and then another one. All day. The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn’t feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn’t solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where’s the recovery in all of this?”