by Randy Shaw on January 3, 2023 (BeyondChron.org)
Dealers at Larkin/Turk return once ambassadors leave
City Hall Must Finally Act
How’s this for a New Year’s Resolution for San Francisco in 2023: the city comes together to close open air drug markets. We’ve had plenty of strong talk but drug markets remain pervasive. Consider:
In December 2021 Tenderloin families met with Mayor Breed and urged her to end open air drug markets in the neighborhood. The Mayor then issued an Emergency Declaration that brought national publicity to the crisis. But the Declaration was not accompanied by a strategy to close drug markets or the additional police resources necessary.
Drug arrests in the Tenderloin did not rise following the Declaration. The open drug markets continued.
In December 2022 over 150 Tenderloin small businesses sent a petition to the mayor again calling for an end to open air drug markets. The petition called for a refund of the money they pay to the city without getting protections granted businesses in other neighborhoods (See Heather Knight, “Tenderloin businesses pay plenty in taxes. But they’re getting little from S.F. in exchange”).
Dealers are not going to leave voluntarily. The cartel is a billion-dollar business. Why would it leave a profitable location like the Tenderloin or SOMA absent pressure that cuts into profits?
San Francisco cannot keep allowing talk to replace action. A public deadline for closing drug markets must be set.
The city has long fiddled while drug cartels opened and expanded in the Tenderloin. In August 2019 the U.S. Attorney for San Francisco announced a crackdown on Tenderloin drug cartels. A June 2021 report from the San Francisco Drug Dealing Task Force concluded that “while District 6 (D6), and especially the Tenderloin, has been a hotbed for illegal drug activity for decades, the situation has intensified in recent years coinciding with increased use of illegally produced synthetic opioids like fentanyl.”
Did these announcements bring more police to the Tenderloin? No.
City Needs Strategy, Deadline, and Follow Through
If the city has a strategy for closing drug markets in 2023 it has not been announced. Many Bay Area reporters are busy promoting safe injection sites. They are not interested in questioning why drug markets are still allowed to torment small businesses and working-class Tenderloin residents.
Why is San Francisco the only city in the United States where an international drug cartel openly operates only blocks from City Hall? And likely the only city in the world that allows such activities?
San Francisco wants to move forward to a post-pandemic future. But this brighter future cannot proceed if the city is known for open drug dealing, overdoses, and violence associated with the drug business.
Due to the police shortage I recently urged Mayor Breed to request that Governor Newsom send the National Guard to the Tenderloin to help close these drug markets (“A Year Later, Tenderloin Still Requires an Emergency Response,” December 12, 2022). The response was overwhelmingly positive but some feared the “militarization” of the Tenderloin. The National Guard would not have powers beyond local police and would effectively be making up for the historic shortage of officers. Many on the city’s left downplay the harm caused by open dealing or attribute it to racism. That can’t stop the city from moving forward.
A Citywide Problem
If Tenderloin and SOMA businesses and residents had the political clout to close these drug markets on their own it would have already happened.
This is a San Francisco crisis. The entire city must come together to demand action.
I realize that some San Francisco neighborhoods are not directly impacted by the open drug trade. But businesses across the city are losing customers who have either experienced or seen videos about the drug scene.
The city’s two major theaters, the Golden Gate and Orpheum, are directly impacted. In fact, the Orpheum is only a block from a huge open air drug market at 8th and Market.
City Hall must hear from people across the city. It must hear that a deadline for ending open drug markets must be set and completed in 2023. The city cannot eliminate all drug dealers. But it can shut down open air drug markets that are not part of Tenderloin history. Drug markets controlled by an international cartel so organized that it even has lunched delivered to its dealers.
Will San Francisco end open air drug markets in 2023? It’s a question of political will.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
