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Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
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Feb 8 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I agree addicts have to decide to quit, but they are more likely to quit when when loved ones intervene and when they have to obey the law. When we don't enforce the laws against public drug use, defecation, and camping, we enable, normalize, & increase addiction.
Yes, addicts have to hit bottom before they'll quit, but San Francisco and other progressive cities keep lowering the bottom. They don't enforce laws against addicts. They give them cash and housing. And now they are giving addicts their own drug use areas downtown.
This isn't complicated. In Europe, addicts and the mentally ill are expected to take responsibility for their health and their cities. They are not excused of those duties. To boil it down:

1. Enforce laws
2. Shelter First, Treatment First
3. Housing Earned
Shelter is indeed a right, as we should not leave people to sleep outside, particularly in cities, but housing is not

Nothing entitles you to a free apartment unit in San Francisco because of your addiction, and yet that is the position @GavinNewsom @LondonBreed et al. hold
Moreover, giving housing to addicts, unconditionally, doesn't work, whereas contingency housing (Housing Earned) does. Just giving apartment units to addicts without addressing their underlying addiction/mental illness means they don't retain it.

What characterizes all functioning systems of addressing addiction and homelessness in civilized cities, which SF is not, is having assertive case workers who can get people the care they need with as minimal use of the justice system as possible. Housing as a reward helps
The evidence that enabling addiction, from the supervised addiction site to unconditional "Housing First" to letting addicts defecate/inject/camp anywhere can be seen in the streets of San Francisco

bariweiss.substack.com/p/slow-motion-…
San Francisco's pro-homelessness, addiction-maintenance policies aren't just destroying lives they also destroying cities.

The city has taken the city from the people and turned it over to addicts and violent foreign drug dealers

No wonder it's ghostly

Progressives have for decades grossly misrepresented what they do in Europe.

No major city in Europe allows the open drug scenes that exist in SF, LA, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, and increasingly in Denver, Philly, Boston, Wash DC, and NYC

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More from @ShellenbergerMD

Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 10
People say we just need to offer homeless addicts more services, including special places where they can use drugs. But yesterday, one block from San Francisco's new drug use site, I discovered mass, open drug use, drug dealing, & psychotic, skeletal addicts on the brink of death
People say we need to follow the lead of Portugal which, they say, legalized, de-stigmatized, and normalized drug use. But the head of its drug program told me they arrest people who use drugs publicly, coerce treatment, and do not normalize drug use.

The most influential drug policy organization in the U.S., including with the Biden Admin., has, for decades, lied about what Portugal does

Here, the Director of Research for @DrugPolicyOrg told me "a police officer will not arrest" someone using drugs in public, which is false
Read 8 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 9
People say lack of housing forces local residents into the streets, but James says he came from Texas to San Francisco for the drugs, the non-enforcement of anti-camping laws, and the $820/month in welfare & food stamps. James says he sold fentanyl, 2 weeks ago, to a 15-year-old.
It's reasonable to ask whether I'm seeking out outliers, but I met James 5 minutes after parking my car and he was the first person I interviewed, and Ben, below, was the 4th person we interviewed after ~20 minutes on the street doing interviews

People are surprised by these interviews because much of what we've read is propaganda put forward by activists with an agenda & reporters who are also ideological but also lazy & too scared to ask direct questions of street people.

Read 8 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 8
The people operating San Francisco's supervised drug addiction site say they're trying to save lives, but a government insider tells me, "People die in supervised drug sites all the time. They just register place of death as the hospital or ambulance."

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/insider-warn…
San Francisco Mayor @LondonBreed , Sen. @Scott_Wiener & SF Sup. @MattHaneySF claim supervised addiction sites prevent overdose deaths but there is ZERO evidence from anywhere that they do that.

Moreover, the sites may in fact INCREASE overdoes & poisoning deaths.
Far more people who overdose are revived and survive than die.

That's the situation right NOW *outside* the supervised drug addiction site.

During the last decade, as Canada created supervised addiction sites, its OD and poisoning deaths from illicit drugs *increased.*
Read 11 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 8
“Shellenberger … said police asked if he, in turn, wanted to file a complaint.

“I said ‘no’ despite the fact that it is an illegal and unethical experiment being done on our most vulnerable citizens.” sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San…
“I was in the linkage center monitoring it as is my right as a citizen,’ Shellenberger said. “I was covering a secret and illegal medical experiment. I was evicted from the site.”
Glad to see it only took the @sfchronicle 12 hours to catch up to my reporting this time. Last time it took 5 days.
Read 7 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 7
In December, when Mayor @LondonBreed said she'd put an end to all the "bullshit" destroying San Francisco, I applauded. I was naive to do so. Instead of ending the bullshit, she's doubled down on it.

Me @bariweiss with a 🔥introduction by @NellieBowles

bariweiss.substack.com/p/slow-motion-…
The following introduction is by @NellieBowles:

At this point all I can say is: go and see it.

Over the past two years, more than 1,360 people have died from drug overdoses in San Francisco. That is more than double the number who have died from Covid.
But you don’t need more stats. You don’t need more numbers about how the tent encampments are exploding. Or about the amount of money that the city is paying for each person doing drugs on the sidewalks. You need to see it.
Read 62 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Feb 7
The words "homeless" and "encampments" make those places sound nice, but they're not

"The other homeless people are your worst enemy," said Ben. "It's cut throat."

Sometimes literally. Addiction's a brutal life.

"Homeless" is a propaganda word for blinding you to reality
Some people accused me of manipulating the videos I tweeted out yesterday of my interview with Ben, who has been a homeless heroin addict on the streets of San Francisco for 7 years.

My colleague @lwoodhouse has posted unedited videos of Ben saying the same things — and more
"I was an addict way before" moving to SF, says Ben

"Out here, the big problem is these kids 18 or 19 years old who 6 months ago were smoking weed and they smoke fentanyl a couple of times and it's shitty and makes the scene weirder."

Read 9 tweets

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