San Francisco Does the Soft Touch Shuffle

One of America’s most beautiful cities, San Francisco, has been reduced to something resembling a post-apocalyptic hellscape. The wealthy live in gated compounds or in apartments high above the streets. Down at ground level, the streets are ruled by roving bands of criminal thugs and homeless hordes doping, sleeping, fornicating, and defecating on the sidewalks.

The ruination of San Francisco wasn’t caused by a tsunami, a meteor strike, or even the earthquake that everyone expected to mark the end of the city. It was caused by a few decades of insane Democrat governance – with emphasis on the insane.

Residents are moving out and taking their money with them. Tourists are avoiding the city like the plague – because they don’t want to catch the plague. With mountains of cash leaving, and none coming in, the mayor has taken notice. London Breed (sounds like a steak) thinks there may be a problem – duh. She’s asking the public for creative ideas. All she can think of is raising taxes and mandating pronoun discipline.

But Mayor Breed has some constraints on those creative ideas. She wants a “soft touch” solution. City officials have assured the public that none of the city’s vagrants socially challenged sidewalk dwellers will go to jail. She wants a solution that will stop bad behavior, without punishing bad behavior. Sure, nothing flawed about that logic.

To understand how to fix the problem, we need to understand how the “jewel by the bay” became such a mess. The city leadership needs to understand that illicit drug use and homelessness are part of the same problem. If they don’t understand that, they should check out these photos.

The first thing the city did to start down this path was to decriminalize drug usage. They opened the gateway to other drugs by legalizing marijuana. It never occurred to city officials that nobody does hard drugs without starting with weed.

Then, as users transitioned from weed to heroin, fentanyl, and crystal meth, they concluded that users weren’t criminals, they were victims of a society that had cast them aside. They didn’t need to go to jail. They needed our understanding – the enabling type of understanding, not the “they’re a menace to society” type of understanding. Of course, the druggies took this “understanding” as tacit approval for their bad decisions. The city got more people making bad decisions.

Next, the city tried to “assist” the druggies into clean living. It opened a linkage center to “link” the addicts with drug counseling, meals, hygiene training (because crapping on the sidewalk is a training issue), and safe places to use drugs. It was the government asking people to not get high, while helping them get high – a solution only a liberal Democrat could come up with.

The city was shocked when the druggies took the free stuff and took a pass on the drug counseling. Nineteen million bucks later, the city is closing the linkage center, but keeping the medically supervised shooting galleries, because all lives are precious – except the unborn ones.

Finally, the city elected a self-avowed social justice warrior, Chesa Boudin, to be its District Attorney. Chesa was raised by actual domestic terrorists – the bomb building kind, not the red hat wearing kind. Now the city is surprised that crime skyrocketed during his tenure. It never occurred to the city that while he was doing social justice, he wouldn’t be doing criminal justice. Chesa embraced the “soft touch” law enforcement concept. But when bad behavior suffers no negative consequences, you get more bad behavior – ask any parent, teacher, or Catholic nun. The city’s drug/homeless problem got worse.

Eventually the citizens of San Francisco realized that a “soft touch” on the criminals, is a hard slap in the face to their victims. They showed Mr. Boudin the door with a recall election. But Mayor Breed is still looking for that “soft touch” solution. The city “soft touched” its way into its current mess and she’s determined to find a “soft touch” way out. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. There is no painless or quick fix for what aisles her city.

Vagrants/addicts own the sidewalks and keep customers from patronizing businesses. Those same addicts are paying for their habits with shoplifting, burglary, and assault.

Businesses are leaving and overdose deaths have skyrocketed. San Francisco has had 1700 drug overdose deaths since 2020. That’s more casualties than the last 12 years of the Afghanistan war – combined. San Francisco doesn’t look like a war zone, it’s worse. For the residents of San Francisco, it’s not a problem, it’s a crisis well beyond any “soft touch” solution.

What are the odds that the current leadership will save the city from this crisis? Not good, based on what I’m hearing so far. They’re big “creative solution” so far is to offer drug dealers training and job placement if they’ll agree to stop selling drugs. I kid you not. How will that play out? “We have a young man, who used to sell fentanyl on the streets, but he’s completed our training, signed the rehabilitation affidavit, and we’d like you to hire him as a pharmacist’s technician.” Yeah – hard pass on that. Most criminals don’t turn to crime because they need a job. They want maximum gain for minimal effort, and don’t care if someone else gets hurt – because they’re evil. Training and promises won’t change that.

San Francisco’s – and the nation’s – drug problem is going to require decades to fix. We need to criminalize the behavior, ostracize the users, and stigmatize the practice.

Drug users are a threat to their communities. It is not a victimless crime. I’m not talking about the users being the victims. I’m talking about

• Citizens assaulted for pocket change
• Shop owners driven out of business
• Children that have to navigate around unconscious junkies on the way to school

Addicts and the industry they fuel, damage our society. It should be criminalized because it cannot coexist with civilized society.

If druggies become cop magnets, others will start to avoid them. They won’t be invited to parties, because the parties may get raided. Friends won’t hang out with them, because guilt by association is a real – and socially necessary – thing. When the risks of associating with druggies overshadow the benefits of their company, they will be ostracized.

Finally, if the media were to put half the effort into showing the ugliness of drug use as it does for other social engineering causes, the practice would be stigmatized. We see plenty of public service messages about cigarette smoking. It’s no longer viewed as a “cool” habit. It’s a filthy habit that nobody wants to be around – and can kill you. Smoking has been stigmatized and its prevalence is waning. Drug use can be beaten the same way – but it will take time and resolve.

The Drug problem can be solved, but not with easy quick fixes. It will take years of tough love. San Francisco and the rest of the country “soft touched” its way into this problem. To think we can fix it, with kindness, happy thoughts, and a song is delusional.

Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He has written for American Thinker,American Free News Network, and The Blue State Conservative. His work has been featured on The Dan Bongino Show, World View Weekend Broadcast with Brannon House, and Steel on Steel with John Loeffler. He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.