"San Francisco has thrown just about everything to try to put an end to the drug markets with little or no success. But now, some city officials say they have one more plan never before tried here. It has been successful in other cities. It's not a mistake to refer to the proliferation of fentanyl in some San Francisco neighborhoods as an epidemic. It's a noun, meaning "an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time.""
"Why is that? Would it surprise you to know that many have told us that San Francisco has never had a drug market intervention strategy? What do we mean by that? "You have to first focus on the sellers. You have to close down the drug market. How do you close a market? You stop the people who are selling. If there are no sellers, there can't be buyers," said Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic."
San Francisco has deployed many tactics to end public drug markets with limited success. City officials propose a market-intervention strategy used elsewhere that targets sellers to disrupt supply and reduce buyer presence. Fentanyl proliferation in several neighborhoods is characterized as an epidemic, and synthetic drugs increased in 2025. Law enforcement continues seizures and arrests, yet the Tenderloin remains a visible public drug market. Advocates argue that closing markets requires stopping sellers. Overdose deaths remained high, with 635 in 2024 and a projected 588 in 2025 while December 2025 data is pending.
Read at ABC7 San Francisco
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]