Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire San Fran to drug test welfarites

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So it all sort of sounds good till the onion is peeled a little.




S.F. voters send clear message supporting more aggressive response to drug crisis
By Maggie Angst
March 5, 2024

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-march-election-prop-f-results-drug-screening-18693764.php



Handouts outlining points for the opposition campaign against Proposition F, the mayor’s measure to mandate drug screenings for welfare recipients, sit on a table during a news conference Feb. 8 at the San Francisco LGBT Center.


A contentious ballot measure sponsored by Mayor London Breed to mandate drug screenings for welfare recipients passed Tuesday, sending a clear message that voters want to see a more aggressive response to the city’s drug crisis.

The measure was backed by 63% of the vote as of Wednesday morning.
Proposition F requires adults who receive cash assistance from San Francisco to undergo a drug screening and enroll in a free treatment program if they’re determined to be drug users. They must then actively participate in treatment but will not be mandated to test negative for drugs.
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Those who fail to participate in treatment will be stripped of their city cash assistance but remain eligible for food stamps and medical benefits from the state. The new regulation will take effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Breed told reporters that the passage of two of her ballot measures, Propositions E and F, would help give her “the kinds of tools I need to continue the work we’re doing” to improve public safety and respond to the drug crisis. Proposition E expands the power of San Francisco police and places new limits on the San Francisco Police Commission.

“I know that people are starting to feel the difference. We have to make sure we continue that momentum,” she said. “These are additional tools that are going to help us deliver some real results for San Francisco.”
Breed, who is seeking reelection, proposed the measure last year amid mounting pressure to better address public drug use and San Francisco’s worsening overdose epidemic. San Francisco last year recorded its deadliest year for accidental overdose deaths, with 813 reported fatalities. Four out of every five involved fentanyl.


Despite a 2008 voter-approved measure that mandated San Francisco provide enough substance use treatment spaces on demand to meet the needs of those addicted, the city has failed to do so. Treatment bed shortages and insufficient staffing, which city officials blame on competition from other cities and a lack of sufficient funds, stand in the way.
The measure is part of a larger shift by Breed away from harm reduction, which seeks to minimize negative health effects of drug use without requiring people to stop using, and toward more forced treatment and law enforcement crackdowns.
Breed in 2017 helped create the city’s supervised drug use task force and was a strong supporter of safe consumption sites, which are part of the harm reduction model. But at a rally just a week before Tuesday’s election, Breed changed her tune, saying that harm reduction was “not reducing the harm” but “making things far worse.” Breed’s health department staunchly stands by harm reduction, putting her at odds with her own officials.
Breed in 2022 opened up the controversial Tenderloin Center in hopes of getting more homeless people dealing with addiction connected to treatment. Although staff at the center reversed more than 300 overdoses, fewer than 1% of visits resulted in connections to mental health or drug treatment.
The measure passed Tuesday will apply to about 5,200 San Franciscans who receive monthly cash payments through the County Adult Assistance Program. Benefits offered through the program range from $109 per month for unhoused people to up to $712 for people in housing. The city’s Human Services Agency, which runs the welfare program, estimates that about a third of those in the program have a substance use disorder and will be required to engage in treatment.


Critics of the measure, who include addiction treatment providers and medical professionals, argue that coercing drug users into treatment is ineffective and a misuse of resources. They also raised concerns about the city’s lack of an implementation plan.
“San Francisco deserves better,” said Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness. “Those suffering from addiction deserve actual solutions and real opportunities for treatment, not false promises and election year politics.”
Gary McCoy, spokesperson for HealthRight 360, the city’s largest addiction treatment provider, said he plans to spend the next nine months working with city officials to ensure the new measure is “not harmful to the communities it’s supposed to help.”
The San Francisco Controller’s Office estimated that it will cost as much as $1.4 million annually to conduct the enhanced screenings required under the measure but no additional funding was set aside. Instead, the city is expecting to pay for it using money saved by cutting off welfare recipients who fail to follow the new rules.
Opponents worry that recipients who rely on cash assistance to pay their rent could also become homeless, only exacerbating the problem. Although city officials pledged that will not happen, saying they will use the money collected from disenrollment to pay landlords and housing providers directly, the measure voters approved did not specifically spell that out.

Why? So they can find out their drug of choice and give them more?

No welfare check for you unless you are on drugs.

They are probably on welfare for being drug addicts. Methadone , legal weed with everything free from New scum all they will find is drug addicts they aint gonna cut anyones welfare unless they want to transfer it to the illegal newcomers. Im gonna miss the newslinks.

Give the dopers all the poison they want- - - -free. Ration the supply of NARCAN. It's a self-correcting problem.

This exact maneuver has been suggested previously and the libs said it was racist.

Links added.

About time

RCA is a cash assistance program for refugees who are not otherwise eligible for any other cash aid. RCA also includes employment and other social services to assist a refugee in becoming self-sufficient.
Population that could be eligible for the RCA encompasses all of the following groups: Refugees, Asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) holders, Afghan and Ukrainian Parolees, Amerasians, and Certified Victims of human trafficking.
RCA is available for up to 12 months from date of admission to the U.S. in qualifying status, date of final grant of asylum or date of certification by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) as Victim of Trafficking.
The Cuban and Haitian Entrant Cash Assistance (ECA) is also a 12 month, federally funded needs-based cash assistance program for qualified Cuban and Haitian who have a current or expired parole, who are in pending removal proceedings, or who have a pending application for asylum are Cuban/Haitian Entrants and thus are eligible for ORR benefits and services, same as a refugee. The program mirrors the Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) program.
Victims of human trafficking may be eligible for additional services before they have a certification by the Office of Trafficking in Persons (OTIP) as Victim of Trafficking. Visit the TCVAP webpage to find out more.

So this affects only the city cash for poor people program, not State benefits. So the likely effect will be that addicts will stop coming to the city to collect the cash so they can buy drugs.

Won't make much difference to addicts already entrenched, but should reduce the attraction of new ones.

How utterly hateful to require those on the dole to at least present the appearance of wanting to get straight!

So…. what's the plan for discouraging sidewalk poopers?

And, if as slumlord's post seems to say, the loss of cash leads to some losing their housing, it will free said housing up for working folks to get a place in one of the most expensive places in the Nation to live???