Democratic San Francisco Mayor Pushing Mandatory Drug Testing, Treatment for Welfare Recipients
“This initiative aims to create more accountability and help get people to accept the treatment and services they need.”
Isn’t it weird how leftist policies never work?
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, wants welfare recipients to participate in drug testing and treatment programs if needed.
Breed thinks the requirement would help address the city’s drug and homeless crisis:
Under the proposed legislation, those who apply for or receive benefits from the County Adult Assistance Programs (CAAP) would undergo screening for substance use disorder and participate in a substance abuse treatment program when the screening reveals that they may have a substance abuse dependency. The legislation must be approved by the Board of Supervisors.
—
Under the new proposal, as a condition of eligibility to receive CAAP, individuals with suspected substance use disorder would be required to participate in substance abuse screenings or treatment programs funded by SFHSA. These treatment programs would include a range of interventions from residential treatment, medical detox, medically-assisted treatment, outpatient options, and abstinence-based treatment, among others based on the needs of the client. Individuals who refuse or do not successfully engage in treatment would not be eligible to receive CAAP cash assistance and their application would be denied, or they would be discontinued from receiving cash assistance.
“San Francisco is a city of compassion, but also a city that demands accountability,” Breed said in a statement. “We fund a wide range of services, and we want to help people get the care they need but under current state law, local government lack tools to compel people into treatment. This initiative aims to create more accountability and help get people to accept the treatment and services they need.”
There is a process for it to become law:
To become law, Breed’s proposal will need to be approved by the Board of Supervisors. Their reactions Tuesday were mixed. Board President Aaron Peskin said the mayor was “grasping for a political lifeline” and predicted the policy would fail, while Supervisor Matt Dorsey was supportive, noting that “coercive interventions can work.” If the board does not approve the proposal, Breed could take it to voters through a ballot initiative.
Around 5,200 people in San Francisco get money through the County Adult Assistance Program. In 2022, the program handed out $30.3 million.
People who reside in houses can get $637 a month.
The homeless receive $105 a month plus a shelter bed.
One survey indicates that 52% of San Francisco’s homeless population suffer from substance abuse and consider it “a disabling condition.”
In 2022, 25% of those who died from overdoses were homeless.
Peskin doesn’t think Breed’s idea is serious. I wonder if Peskin has any ideas to solve the homeless and drug problem:
“These are serious times in San Francisco — and we need serious ideas, not politicians desperately grasping for a political lifeline,” Peskin said. “Mayor Breed does not have the ability, or the will, to organize our many public safety resources to close down drug supermarkets and open-air fencing of stolen goods. If she can’t find the way to prevent several hundred brazen criminals from selling deadly drugs– how does she think she will find the resources to drug test thousands of welfare recipients?
“The answer is she can’t, and she won’t, and this would simply be silly politics if the issues we face as a city were not so serious” Peskin said.
Addiction specialists are weary of the plan. They have a point. Forced rehab doesn’t work well. The addict has got to want to change:
Addiction treatment specialists warned that Breed’s proposal failed to respect human rights and autonomy — and also flies in the face of evidence that suggests such policies do more harm than good.
“The evidence says coercive ‘treatment’ (forced treatments, incarceration, etc.) of substance use — after almost a century of study — is literally worse than doing nothing at all for people who use drugs,” said Ryan Marino, an addiction medicine specialist and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, in a text to the Chronicle. “They are more likely to die if you force them into treatment than if you let them keep using.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
I give her three weeks until she gets transferred to the Russell Brand Home For The Viciously Cancelled.
Good luck. KY tried to put in a work or school requirement for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, but a judge said that was too much for the perpetual lay-abouts.
Judges need to be pit in their place. Jefferson’s prediction about this has proven entirely too right.
“This initiative[*] aims to create more accountability”
Accountability, personal accountability for your own actions?
Automatic = RACIST !!!
*This initiative is hardly new. This had been proposed decades ago by evil people.
That reeks of White Privilege..
“The evidence says coercive ‘treatment’ (forced treatments, incarceration, etc.) of substance use — after almost a century of study — is literally worse than doing nothing at all for people who use drugs,” said Ryan Marino, an addiction medicine specialist and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, in a text to the Chronicle. “They are more likely to die if you force them into treatment than if you let them keep using.”
He’s interpreting the results incorrectly. It’s worse for the user but better for society if they are forced into treatment. Be better or don’t get free stuff is fine with most pragmatists. More likely to die when already slowly killing themselves is not much of a heart string tugger.
Like the statistics that say if you don’t let a kid trans, he’s likely to commit suicide. Left unmentioned is the other statistic that says that after he transes, he’s no less likely to commit suicide. Because it turns out his sex isn’t the basic problem, just a culturally popular distraction from it.
Good point. These wannabe trans people need therapy, not surgery.
And that type of thinking would get you banned on old Twitta. X still views MAPs as sacred cows and will ban you for talking against them.
X, same as old Twitta.
Betcha he’s more likely to commit suicide after such surgery.
Didn’t Clinton end welfare was we know it?
Right after “the era of big government.”
This has been tried before but as the previous commentor noted, judges have stricken it. It should be pursued with all deliberate speed and diligence because it will work.
The ones who are on drugs just for entertainment won’t find it worth it, and the others might just get some genuine help.
This may be too little too late, but at least it’s a move in the right direction. I wasn’t expecting this from San Francisco, of all places. But I wish them success.
“I wasn’t expecting this from San Francisco, of all places”
San Francisco doesn’t have much lower to collapse.
“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
I can’t imagine where Mayor Breed got this progressive idea. Has she perhaps been reading The Federalist on the sly? What’s next, a summit meeting between her and Rand Paul?
I suspect this is just a PR event. She isn’t serious, The top Ds in SF know she is not serious. But this should quiet down the rumblings from the proles who are tired of having their cars broken into and having to do the poopoo dance as they walk down the street. She knows a judge will eventually say no.
Making the test a requirement for welfare is absurd. What do they then do with the ones who refuse? They will still be on the street and will need to steal more to feed their habit. The first step is to call up the National Guard and REMOVE every homeless person from the streets. The second step is to take them to a large internment camp with BASIC facilities outside of the city. and lock them in until they offer to be rehabilitated. The ones who do not get rehabilitated must remain there until they die or a relative comes to rescue them. Of course, there will be multiple lawsuits from the do-gooders and it will then be up to gutless judges to offer them money or hotel rooms forever. When you combine the lack of law enforcement, gutless politicians, with the broken legal system the final answer is to leave CA.
You don’t need the NG; the SFPD is perfectly capable of clearing the streets if the politicals will let them.
The SF city council should petition the state government in Sacramento to allow them to use Angel Island as a homeless camp. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi could chime in. There are already ferry boats that make routine journeys between SF and Angel Island. The frequency of these journeys can be increased as needed.
The SF PD needs to be able to say to the homeless in tents on the city streets “Go to Angel Island or go to jail”.
Erronius
You would turn an island into a hellhole? Not only would every item they consumed be more expensive but there would be shortages because of scheduling trips on a ferry. Pick some land that no developer wants and throw up a chain-link fence around it. Take back our streets!
Then you end up with CHAZ.
Really? Now tell us again about the city’s free hypodermic needle give-a-ways….
Forced rehab doesn’t work? Lock their ass in a shipping container with a cot, a lamp and chemical toilet 22 hours a day. One hour left day of mandatory exercise in the open air/sunshine, 15 minutes for chow x3 and 15 minutes for a daily shower. Cold turkey, nothing but an aspirin or a Tylenol and up to 3 gallons of water per day to drink. Guaranteed the recidivism rate for those completing this 60 day first stage of treatment will be far lower than other methods. Those who survive get into better facilities for another 60 days of supervised treatment now with counseling, medical and dental care. Then into a halfway house for 6 months with employment assistance and random drug screening. Then give them another 8 months of monitored release with a check in every 3 weeks and random screening. Then turn them completely loose.
A Democrat dealing with the consequences of too many Democrats running the show for too long.
The courts have ruled against blanket drug testing sweeps to qualify for benefits again and again. This won’t happen.
“Routinely, these laws have been found unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, because the testing has been deemed a search without cause.[5] In 1999, Michigan became the first state to implement suspicionless drug testing for welfare recipients under its Family Independence Program. The state required all TANF applicants to submit urine drug tests to receive benefits. In 2003, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a federal district court ruling which found the law unconstitutional. In 2011, Florida passed a law requiring suspicion-less drug testing of all TANF applicants and random drug testing of current beneficiaries. In 2014, the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that Florida’s law violated the Fourth Amendment for its unreasonable search of applicants without evidence of “a more prevalent, unique, or different drug problem among TANF applicants than in the general population.”
Just stop paying them anything
Open up food islands where they can eat 2 meals a day and give them
A blanket
Enough of throwing away our money
It isnt theirs , we worked our lives for it
“Forced rehab doesn’t work well. The addict has got to want to change:”
And what causes an addict to “want to change” badly enough to go through the difficult process of breaking both the addiction and the habits associated with it?
It is common knowledge among the community of recovering addicts that the vast majority of people, in order to reach the point where they have the commitment to get and stay off of drugs and alcohol, they have to “hit rock bottom”.
Rock bottom is in different places for everyone. For some people it’s losing a job, losing a relationship, becoming homeless, but for a great many it’s losing their freedom that does it.
The claim that incarceration is detrimental to overcoming addiction is patently false. Is it successful in the case of most addicts? No…because for most addicts there is no success. They will use drugs or abuse alcohol until they die…but for the few who actually can recover from their addictions, that jail sentence and imprisonment is often the catalyst that drives their recovery…”I’m never, ever going back in there…”
Legalization and patronization of drug use and alcohol abuse does nothing to help the problem…it simply “normalizes” (to put it into terms the left can understand) substance abuse to the point where many people who would not have succumbed 30 years ago, give it a try and eventually are added to the growing pool of addicts.
I am not a researcher or scientist so I have no data or ginned up “studies” to back up my assertions…just many years of experience with close relationships to addicts, recovering addicts and addicts who will never recover…and a bit of common sense.
Let them discover their “Rock Bottom” in a camp with no access to the public.