Opinion: Prop 47 didn't help CA's vulnerable drug addicts; it enabled self-destructive behaviors
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Tom Wolf, once homeless and struggling with addiction, now advocates for our unhoused neighbors as director of West Coast Initiatives for the Foundation For Drug Policy Solutions. In an op-ed for The Voice of SF, Wolf breaks down where he thinks Proposition 47 fell miserably short, and how Prop 47 reform could promote safety, accountability, and healing for those needing help in our communities.
When you walk the streets of the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or Skid Row in Los Angeles, or the streets of nearby Venice, there’s a desperation in the air — the desperation of people anchored to the streets for a variety of reasons. Trauma, untreated mental illness, and of course, addiction. In San Francisco conservative estimates suggest at least half of the 8,000 unsheltered homeless struggle with addiction, and according to a 2019 UCLA study, up to 78 percent of the homeless encountered in Los Angeles struggle with co-occurring disorders (addiction and mental illness).
Our first inclination is to help them. We try with street outreach like the Street Crisis Response Teams in San Francisco or the CIRCLE public safety program in Los Angeles. Both efforts are good and needed. But you know what else is needed? Policing. When someone is struggling with addiction, untreated mental illness, or both, and aren’t able to get the help they need, negative behaviors become apparent. This is where accountability can play a role by mitigating behaviors sometimes caused by addiction. When someone is in a meth-induced psychosis walking down the street, screaming, banging their head against a wall, or assaulting an innocent bystander, intervention is needed. When someone struggling with fentanyl addiction steals from Target or Macy’s to then sell their wares for money to buy drugs, intervention is needed.
This is where Proposition 47 has failed and why we need to reform it. Since its implementation, which reduced penalties for quality-of-life crimes like shoplifting, drug possession, and open-air drug use have increased in regularity, size, and intensity. It is estimated that more than 5,000 people are on the street on Skid Row and 4,000 in just two neighborhoods in San Francisco. And if half or more are struggling with addiction or mental illness, we’re going to have problems. And I don’t just mean overdose deaths, but violence, theft, assault, and trafficking. According to National Institute on Drug Abuse, addiction is defined as a “chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite adverse consequences.” Those adverse consequences often require accountability. Proposition 47 removed or reduced that accountability to the point that often police no longer respond or arrest individuals committing a misdemeanor offense when a response is exactly what they need. Proposition 36 will bring back the use of drug courts and offer the choice of drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration. This will help an untold number of people on the street get a second chance at life. Being given a choice and a push to seek recovery while at the same time, helping to improve morale upon an overburdened and understaffed police force throughout our state.
The other issue is fentanyl dealers. A commonly misused piece of data from the 1990s often used by criminal justice reform advocates is that 40 percent of people who sell drugs also use drugs themselves. But guess what? The drug markets in California have changed in the past 30 years. In San Francisco as an example, 95 percent of all street drug sales are conducted through an organized cartel-backed network of dealers who are mostly undocumented from Honduras. They have rules. Rule No. 1? You can’t use your own supply. If you do, you get kicked out. Right now, San Francisco has close to 1,000 organized drug dealers on its streets. How will Proposition 36 change this? Simply, Proposition 36 will require courts to warn people convicted of selling or providing illegal drugs to others that they can be charged with murder if they keep doing so and someone dies (Alexandra’s law). It would also require prison time for those convicted of selling or trafficking large amounts of fentanyl. For context, 80 kilos of fentanyl was seized by SFPD just in the Tenderloin last year. This means hundreds of pounds of fentanyl is flowing through cities like San Francisco and since 2020, over 3,000 people have died in this city because of it and over 30,000 throughout the state of California. Proposition 47 opened the door at the same time as cartels figured out how to make synthetic drugs. You would be hard pressed to find heroin on the streets of San Francisco or Los Angeles today.
What’s the bottom line? Proposition 47 did more harm than good. It opened the door to organized drug dealers to take hold of entire cities. Proposition 47 kept people out of county jail but failed to provide the infrastructure needed to keep them off the street. Proposition 47 made stores lock up everything to keep it from being stolen. Proposition 47 brought the jails outside to you. The next time you go to Target for that laundry detergent and a pair of socks and have to wait 10 minutes for someone to come and unlock the case it’s stored in, thank Proposition 47.
Read the whole thing here.
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