Broken clocks are right twice per day. When he vetoed Senate Bill 56 on Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom was the epitome of this analogy. It would have legalized the operation of drug harm relief centers within major cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. A pilot program that allows people to use illegal drugs while under medical supervision is currently in operation in San Francisco.
Levon Satamian was my co-worker and he acknowledged that Newsom did it once.
It is both a horrible bill and a temporary win for Californians. Newsom was right to credit for his decision. This is possibly the only time in 18 years of politics that Newsom did not harm California or San Francisco.
Much of the reporting on Newsom’s veto gives him praise for avoiding a political landmine, and some allude to the fact that Newsom is no doubt feathering his bed in the event he does run for president in 2024.
In rejecting the measure, Newsom expressed concern about what he called the “unintended consequences” of allowing an unlimited number of supervised consumption sites without additional safeguards. He made this difficult decision as he sought to increase his national visibility, putting his progressive ideas and his allies up against his opponents and party members who saw the bill as encouraging drug use.
These sites approval would not be approved by Flyover country because of his aspirations for the presidency.
London Breed, the San Francisco mayor had already decided to close the pilot program before the vetoes of SB 57. There is scant coverage about this from the local or state papers—Newsom’s “homegrown team” doing their usual PR work.
The problem is that U.K. Daily MailWe did an in-depth analysis of the extent to which harm was reduced in just eight months and also looked at corruption and mishandling funds.
San Francisco’s notorious taxpayer-funded open-air drugs market will close at the end of the year – after the facility that’s said to have cost $19m in taxpayer cash treated just one in every 1,000 users and failed to cut fatal overdose numbers.
The Linkage Center in the Tenderloin, at the heart of San Francisco’s civic center, opened in January and was intended to help the city’s large population of homeless people and drug addicts to find help.
But critics say the site, rented at a cost of $75,000 a month, has failed to curtail the problem in the crime-ridden city, which recently recalled its woke DA Chesa Boudin amid a spike in crimes blamed for a sharp decline in locals’ quality of life.
[…]
They noted that only 0.1% of the users were directed to treatment within the first five month, even with the $19 million in operating costs.
Just 18 out of 23,367 users of drugs who visited the website between January-April were referred for treatment.
Additionally, overdose fatalities have not decreased in any meaningful way. In January, 49 people died according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and in February, there were 45.
And the center even went on to quietly drop the word ‘linkage’ from its title, because so few of the drug abusers who visited were being linked to any meaningful form of help.
In 2021, Rhode Island’s legislature approved a two-year pilot program to establish these harm reduction sites throughout the state. Later that year, New York City also did the same. Any documented information on whether these programs are faring better or worse than San Francisco’s test is yet to be seen. In San Francisco and Oregon, Measure 110, which is their attempt to reduce harm, has shown that drug addiction has increased rather than declined.
It is also well-documented that the legacy media fails to recognize open-air, illegal or legal drug markets and the chaos they cause in peaceful once secure neighborhoods. These programs, however well-intentioned, only result in disintegration and failure of communities, not success.
This video of San Francisco school children walking through a corridor of homeless drug addicts went viral and received the appropriate outrage for a reason: this is a picture of the so-called “unintended consequences” that Newsom gave as the reason for his veto of the bill.
San Francisco’s Progressive Filth makes it possible for black schoolchildren to walk in drug-ridden conditions on main streets. This should not be tolerated. These people care less about children than drug addicts. https://t.co/y4DFAuskzS
— Ole Miss Rising (@OleVanishing) July 10, 2022
Newsom is well aware that the results are not unknown and unintended. Thanks to progressive district attorneys, Prop 47, and Newsom’s failure to stem the tide of homelessness, California citizens who live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland are already living in a dystopian world of crime run amok, looting, and being the subject of true homicide stories just by stepping out of their doors.
Chicago’s Westside residents wrote an opinion in the Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-TimesHe spoke out about the devastating decline in his community as a result of the illegal market, which law enforcement is unable to curb.
The start time is eight o’clock. A vehicle with one or three men is driven up and parked on the street. Soon another car with 3-4 men in it will be arriving. While children head to schools nearby, the men sell their vehicles.
A second car comes up to park and drives up as the day goes on. Four more people jump out to join the others on the block. You may not be able to see the people if you don’t live there. But on a summer day, you hear constant calls of “Nuk, nuk and nuk” indicating what they have available for sale to cars as they drive past.
You can see that there are many other drugs on the streets. If you drive further down, the calls change. On any given day there could be up to 15 sellers selling various items by mid-afternoon.
It is now four p.m. and another car pulls up. It is full with children selling their goods on the streets. The children arrive in the car to have fun, hang out with their family, watch and, sometimes, even join their parents who are busy plying their trade. The air fills with a variety of calls, as “nuk” and “8-ball” are interspersed with children laughing, yelling, crying.
A dispute breaks out between the sellers at least 3 times per week. The others in the group always seem to calm things down before weapons are drawn, but it’s only a matter of time till that happens. Police cars markedly driving down the street are followed by another warning. The sales stop when they see the police car and then the call to warn is issued. Occasionally, the dealers mock police while they pass.
The police in Boston have increased their patrols after five stabbings that occurred over three days in open-air drugs markets.
Whether legally-sanctioned or illegal, Newsom knows, and Americans who don’t live in blue state hellscapes know that harm reduction centers are a scourge, producing the devolution of society rather than the progression. With Newsom’s eyes on the prize of running for president, his veto of SB 57 was a calculated move to appear more centrist, and less progressive. We’ll see how it plays in those red states he’s been attempting to court.
Knowing Newsom’s duplicitousness, he probably engineered this theater with full complicity from his Democrat legislative super majority.
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