In recent decades, the city of San Francisco became a living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with progressive politics. There are good reasons for it: the once beautiful, modest-sized urban center gifted with mild climate and breathtaking ocean views mutated into an open air asylum for frequently violent psychotics.
I don’t expect much will change anytime soon because the locals, no matter how intolerable their day-to-day existence becomes, are highly ideological creatures. Their allegiances to left wing ideologies are so intense that they are unlikely to consider the possibility that their worldview might be the root of the region’s problems.
Take, for example, the recent San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed by Keith Humphreys that blames the city’s intractable homelessness and addiction on—-wait for it-—libertarian attitudes. I generally find Humphreys insightful. For instance, in the same Op-Ed he explained how American experts misrepresent the Portuguese model of tackling drug dependency. Contrary to the oft-repeated dogma, the Iberian nation doesn’t allow the unobstructed flow of heroin or offer rehab as a mere suggestion. It doesn’t tolerate open air heroin markets, and it forces addicts to quit.
Elsewhere Humphreys suggests using the term “drug poisoning” in place of “overdose” because the latter implies that there exists the correct dose of a recreational narcotic. Although I am generally not in favor of manipulating language, the word “overdose” comes with excess amount of glamour baggage: think Gary Oldman in Sid and Nancy. “Poisoning” is a better, more neutral term.
Unfortunately, when it comes to pinpointing the ideological roots of San Francisco’s vices, Humphreys is badly off base (archive link):
What bedevils the city instead is its libertarian, individualistic culture. Since at least the 19th century, Americans have come to San Francisco to be free of traditional constraints back East, to reinvent themselves, to escape the small-mindedness of small towns and to find themselves. This culture underlies the city’s entrepreneurialism, artistic energy and tolerance for diversity in all forms.But this has a downside when it comes to addiction, which thrives in such a cultural milieu. San Francisco has long been one of the booziest cities in the country as measured by metrics such as bars per capita or percentage of income spent on alcohol. The psychedelic drug revolution and much of the cannabis culture were born in the Bay Area. The “new” crisis around fentanyl is thus not as novel as portrayed: Heavy use of substances has always been part of how San Francisco defines freedom and the good life.
Although there is an overlap in liberal and libertarian attitudes towards mind-altering substances, one would be pressed to say in what other area the town that yearly posts a budget the size of a frugal small nation, regulates every aspect of its residents’ lives, and sends Nancy Pelosi to Congress can be considered libertarian. It makes no sense to talk about the Wild West heritage when San Francisco demographics shifted dramatically over the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries. Those who arrived in the Golden Gate City since the 1960’s tended to be leftists. Libertarianism withered away with John Bargagelata, the last elected Republican leader.
In fact, the “city’s entrepreneurialism” is an attempted import from the nearby Silicon Valley, “artistic energy” hardly ever existed here–Los Angeles is the creative center of the West Coast–and don’t even try to tell a conservative about that famed “tolerance for diversity in all forms.”
We do have the drugs, though, lots of them.
San Francisco’s attitude towards drugs and addiction is not that of the libertarian “make your mistakes and pay for them” kind. Instead, the city creates problems, nurtures them, gets the government (including government-funded non-profits) involved in their maintenance, and keeps expanding the government role in facilitating addiction.
How big of a role does San Francisco want for its government in the drug epidemic? Very big indeed: it’s eyeing the takeover of the recreational drug supply.
For decades, the city not only allowed the sale of narcotics under the nose of the cops, it expanded the problem by enabling the addicts through generous subsidies. And if that it not enough, it dabbled in promoting drug use for pleasure.
In 2020, the city sponsored “know overdose” billboards with a picture of happy partiers. “Do it with friends,” it said. “Use it with friends and take turns. Try not to use alone, or have someone check on you.” The marketing team was ostensibly promoting NARCAN, the drug for reviving passed out junkies–at least that was what the message in the fine print said. Yet I can’t think of a better way to promote narcotics to the general public than by posting a picture of smiling partiers sprinkled with some words about friends.
Our leadership echoes this easy fun attitude toward addiction. California Governor and San Francisco native Gavin Newsom once said that “[c]lean and sober is the biggest damn mistake this country ever made.” In the following sentence the Progressive politico admitted to “self-medicating” with “a glass of wine.”
To be fair, Newsom did veto the bill authorizing “safe injection sites” last year, but that was likely because he entertains presidential ambitions. The bill, written by Progressive State Senator Scott Weiner of San Francisco, would allow for the establishment of government-run facilities where city employees would oversee recreational drug consumption, presumably reversing poisonings.
The latest idea being explored by local leadership is “safe supply,” or government-regulated narcotics trade. Proponents of the idea speculate that fatal poisonings can be avoided if dope potency is consistent. The local government would play a role (it’s not clear yet how big) in providing addicts with substances on which they depend . . . for their own good. In other words, the paternalistic city government sees itself as a permanent ongoing solution to the problem it allows and encourages to proliferate.
The goals of the proponents go beyond keeping the addicts alive. The San Francisco Standard reports:
Department of Public Health behavioral health director Hillary Kunins said that the city is looking to broaden access to medically assisted treatment for people suffering from drug dependency. Kunins pointed to Canada and Switzerland, which offer prescription opioids—including heroin and fentanyl—in an effort to stabilize the drug supply and destigmatize drug use.
But what purpose does it serve to destigmatize synthetic opiates if not to promote their use? Rampant use, in turn, provides an excuse for further government expansion.
While Canada’s program is new, as Michael Shellenberger pointed out in his seminal work San Fransicko, the European countries erroneously known for tolerance of drug use in reality break up the open air drug markets and force users into treatment. In Europe, drug maintenance is only available, as a last resort, to addicts who do not respond to other treatments.
Like Portugal, Switzerland is a traditionalist society that simply doesn’t tolerate the sight of addiction. In Europe, governments use their power to preserve their way of life. No way would they allow an opiate market to spring up between the city hall and the opera. European traditionalism stands in stark contrast to the progressivism of American cities where displays of depravity are welcome even as society and culture suffer.
Progressives successfully shut up their critics using the traditional lefty tactic: shame. Ask the local leadership to guarantee safe, welcoming streets for all and be prepared to be accused of not caring and maybe even of being a conservative. There is no residual libertarianism in the Bay Area, only big government creating problems that it can later appoint itself to solve. Does that sound libertarian?
No positive change will take place in San Francisco until the voters understand this dynamic and consider adopting European traditionalism.
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