A venture capitalist is having ambient thoughts about fentanyl, SROs, and addicts in SF. Let's break it down:
- there are 1000s of addicts in every major city
- most people in SF were not 'born & raised' in SF
- Michael Seibel himself is from Brooklyn...
San Francisco’s come back is real but we still have a serious problem.
The unfortunately truth is that thousands of Fentanyl addicts live here. Most are not born and raised in SF but they have come to use drugs and are housed in our shelters and SROs. They take a drug that is 30-50x more addictive than heroin and as a result are not interested in drug treatment which is offered to them regularly. As long as these people live here and are not in treatment, the conditions on the street will be impacted by their presence. As long as they are here and using, dealers will figure out how to sell them drugs. I dont judge these addicts, they aren’t violent and I can’t imagine trying to combat a fentanyl addiction. But that doesn’t change the fact that their presence creates negative externalities that impact our city everyday.
Too many people are talking about the symptoms and not the problem.
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I love discussing the facts. Thanks for engaging.
Per capita we have many many more fentanyl users and much more per capital consumption than most cities in America. By age adjusted opioid deaths per capita we rank 4th in the nation.
Completely agree many people in SF are not from here. But it is also the case that many communities in the region, state, country encourage their drug users to come to SF. It is also true we have some of the lowest fentanyl prices and best homeless services.
You’re correct I was wrong - fentanyl is 30-50x more potent. It is also more addictive and harder to treat / overcome than heroin. As a result, we shouldn’t expect all of the solutions discovered to fight heroin will work out of the box for fentanyl.
To clarify my point about SROs/Shelters - most drug users in our city have a place to sleep at night that is not the streets. When people see drug users on the streets they assume they have nowhere to sleep inside. Most of the time that is not true.
Many people assume the users on the streets want treatment and there are no resources available. This isn’t true. Most users reject treatment when it is offered and it is offered very frequently. A lot of our best practices involve supporting users with housing, healthcare, and services until they decide they are ready for treatment.
I’m not implying any solutions. I’m trying to get people to talk about what’s happening.
Are there any solutions you believe we should be exploring?
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