{"id":24692,"date":"2023-01-09T12:16:35","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T20:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=24692"},"modified":"2023-01-09T12:16:37","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T20:16:37","slug":"a-national-poisoning-expert-on-u-s-drug-abuse-says-conditions-in-s-f-s-tenderloin-are-tragically-familiar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/a-national-poisoning-expert-on-u-s-drug-abuse-says-conditions-in-s-f-s-tenderloin-are-tragically-familiar\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018national poisoning\u2019: Expert on U.S. drug abuse says conditions in S.F.\u2019s Tenderloin are tragically familiar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/author\/kevin-fagan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kevin Fagan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jan. 8, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"mailto:?subject=Your%20friend%20has%20shared%20a%20San%20Francisco%20Chronicle%20link%20with%20you%3A%20&amp;body=A%20%E2%80%98national%20poisoning%E2%80%99%3A%20Expert%20on%20U.S.%20drug%20abuse%20says%20conditions%20in%20S.F.%E2%80%99s%20Tenderloin%20are%20tragically%20familiar%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfchronicle.com%2Fbayarea%2Farticle%2Ftenderloin-sam-quinones-17700387.php%3Futm_campaign%3DCMS%2520Sharing%2520Tools%2520(Premium)%26utm_source%3Dshare-by-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%0A%0AFentanyl%20and%20meth%20have%20overwhelmed%20other%20drugs%20on%20the%20street%20throughout%20the%20United%20States%2C...%0A%0AThis%20message%20was%20sent%20via%20San%20Francisco%20Chronicle\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/articleComments\/tenderloin-sam-quinones-17700387.php\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s.hdnux.com\/photos\/01\/31\/02\/46\/23341452\/6\/1200x0.jpg\" alt=\"\u201cDreamland\u201d author Sam Quinones visits Civic Center Plaza in S.F., where drug use is a common sight.\"\/><figcaption>\u201cDreamland\u201d author Sam Quinones visits Civic Center Plaza in S.F., where drug use is a common sight.Gabrielle Lurie\/The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Sam Quinones, one of the nation\u2019s foremost chroniclers of American drug abuse, took a stroll around&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/tenderloin\/\">San Francisco\u2019s Tenderloin<\/a>&nbsp;last week to take a hard look at the beleaguered neighborhood\u2019s street addict scene. Like anyone else who\u2019s taken that stroll lately, he saw the brazen fentanyl and methamphetamine use \u2014 and the grim consequences of unchecked addiction \u2014 that\u2019s become a dispiriting calling card for that part of town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nothing much surprised him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a journalist and author covering America\u2019s drug and homelessness epidemics for years, Quinones said what he witnessed has become alarmingly familiar across the country \u2014 and the crisis in the Tenderloin is not the uniquely San Francisco horror that locals and outside observers think it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not unlike several parts of the country I\u2019ve seen,\u201d Quinones said dryly, standing in UN Plaza while dealers hawked dope 20 feet away and a young woman squatted under an umbrella to smoke fentanyl through a straw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis story is the same all over the nation, because the drugs have covered the nation. It\u2019s everywhere, and the massive supply that\u2019s available now is the reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More for you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/California-seized-over-28-000-pounds-of-fentanyl-17675155.php\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/California-seized-over-28-000-pounds-of-fentanyl-17675155.php\">California seized over 28,000 pounds of fentanyl in 2022, governor\u2019s office announces<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/California-seized-over-28-000-pounds-of-fentanyl-17675155.php\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/bayarea\/article\/California-seized-over-28-000-pounds-of-fentanyl-17675155.php\"><\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/San-Francisco-passes-500-fatal-overdoses-so-far-17607009.php\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/San-Francisco-passes-500-fatal-overdoses-so-far-17607009.php\">Overdose death toll in S.F. surpasses 500 people this year amid fentanyl-fueled drug crisis<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/San-Francisco-passes-500-fatal-overdoses-so-far-17607009.php\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/San-Francisco-passes-500-fatal-overdoses-so-far-17607009.php\"><\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Quinones, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and author of 2015\u2019s best-selling \u201cDreamland\u201d about the opioid epidemic, has been following the international drug trade for decades. His latest book, 2021\u2019s \u201cThe Least of Us,\u201d documents how synthesized fentanyl and pure meth, easily made with cheap chemicals in Mexico, have been pouring into the U.S., dominating the drug market and torquing drug addiction to new and dangerous levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That explosion, he said, is also helping drive a spike in homelessness around the country \u2014 because not only is fentanyl many times more powerful than heroin, but the newly more potent meth also causes extreme psychosis and instability. Both trap people in a cycle of addiction and hopelessness that makes it difficult to get off the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quinones worked decades ago as a journalist in the Tenderloin, and was familiar with the city, but what he saw this week in the Tenderloin and other areas of San Francisco mirrored what he\u2019s seen in Kentucky, Los Angeles, Reno, Portland, Ore., and Denver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was taken aback at the \u201cfearless\u201d nature of some of the drug dealers who flipped him off and threw bottles at him while he was filming them with his phone \u2014 \u201cThey were laughing and behaving like they owned the block,\u201d he said. But the rampantly open use of dope? Same story, different city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis has gone beyond what any city or county can deal with,\u201d said the 64-year-old writer, who lives in Nashville. \u201cIt\u2019s a national poisoning. We need to understand that this is supply-driven. It\u2019s just way too available in massive quantities. And just like with homelessness, there is no one fix.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Known<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/projects\/2021\/san-francisco-drug-overdoses-map\/\">&nbsp;overdose deaths in San Francisco<\/a>&nbsp;have more than doubled since 2017, to 625 in 2021, and those overwhelmingly involved fentanyl either alone or mixed into another drug, with meth close behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the nearly 8,000 people unhoused on any given night in San Francisco don\u2019t struggle with substance abuse \u2014 but you don\u2019t see them, generally. The ones visibly struggling in tents or shooting up on the sidewalk are the nearly 3,000 chronically homeless folks, so called because they have been outside for at least a year and suffer from disabilities that predominantly involve drugs, alcohol or mental illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s that population that Quinones was visiting this week, researching with no particular project in mind yet. As usual, it only took minutes to find street people in crisis to talk to, particularly in the gritty Tenderloin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m stuck out here because of fentanyl, and I don\u2019t know how to get off it,\u201d admitted a 26-year-old woman who gave her name as Thumper and sported a tattoo reading \u201cBooze\u201d over her right eye. Quinones helped her up when her dog, Bubba, accidentally knocked her down in UN Plaza as he lunged toward a bird. After a quick chit-chat she spilled out a harrowing biography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy dad killed himself and my mom shot me up with meth when I was a kid. I\u2019ve been homeless since I was 14. I don\u2019t do meth any more, but let me tell you \u2014 it\u2019s gotten so much worse now. I think you\u2019ve got to do it more often, and it makes you crazy faster,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quinones noted how fentanyl is more difficult to detox from than heroin, with methadone being one of the few medications that consistently helps, and Thumper vigorously shook her head. \u201cI tried Subutex (buprenorphine) to detox and it was awful, and I couldn\u2019t get on methodone so I tried to detox in an alley and it was hell,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m so sorry to hear that,\u201d Quinones said. \u201cThe more I hear about this, the more I think there\u2019s just this big mix of trauma and drugs.\u201d Thumper again nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of Quinones\u2019 biggest contentions is that a combination of personal trauma, drug addiction and mental illness commonly ensnare the most troubled unhoused people in the street, and addressing all of those problems with a broad range of approaches is the only way to make progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means providing a wider variety of counseling-enriched supportive housing that tapers people off drugs and gets them away from drug-rich environments, increasing police crackdowns on drug dealing, providing intensive drug recovery programs in jail and more \u2014 ideas that are continually debated in San Francisco and other parts of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe way to get people away from drugs is to&nbsp;<em>keep<\/em>&nbsp;people away from drugs during that very important few months when the drugs are telling them \u2018you must go find me,\u2019\u201d Quinones said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDrugs hijack the brain\u2019s instinct for self preservation. We always saw that, but these new drugs do that more completely because of their prevalence and potency. You see that every day in San Francisco, and all over the country \u2014 people who have completely lost their impulse for self preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, drugs are more available than ever, he said. Fentanyl may get the most publicity these days, but super-pure meth has also spiked because of the drop in price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2008, meth cost about $20,000 a pound in Fresno, but today it costs between $500 and $800. Mix that with fentanyl and it\u2019s a lot cheaper and easier to get high \u2014 most hits of meth and fentanyl cost between $1 and $5, cheaper drug highs than available 10 or 20 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the twist is that the fairly new synthetic fentanyl \u2014 which is supplanting organic heroin as the main street opioid \u2014 has to be smoked a half-dozen times a day, at least, to stave off dope-sickness. Heroin gets the job done with two injections a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEvery time Thumper smokes fentanyl she\u2019s playing Russian roulette, six to eight times a day, and the high isn\u2019t even as good,\u201d Quinones said. \u201cNo heroin addict ever wanted to be a fentanyl addict. But you hardly see heroin out here any more compared to fentanyl. Synthetics have just taken over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Figures from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development show that unsheltered homelessness increased nationally 3.4% between 2020 and 2022, despite billions of extra dollars spent on the problem through COVID relief. Most communities in California also saw spikes, and homelessness overall throughout the state shot up 13% since 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>San Francisco was an outlier on the increases, reducing unsheltered homelessness by 15% since 2019. But that\u2019s due to new investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in shelters and housing \u2014 and city officials estimate that for every one homeless person who gets housed, four more take their place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city\u2019s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/S-F-report-puts-a-1-4-billion-price-tag-on-17686136.php\">released a study&nbsp;<\/a>in December contending that ending unsheltered homelessness within three years would require spending an additional $1.4 billion on top of what is already budgeted. But even in that report, HSH admitted the goal is probably impossible for a lot of reasons \u2014 including that four-for-every-one estimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Quinones sees figures like that and blames, in large part, drugs. And in that, he sees death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLeft on the street, people will die,\u201d he said. \u201cMeth will drive them mad and fentanyl will kill them. It\u2019s not like heroin or crack. You used to be able to survive for decades on it. Not with fentanyl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron<\/em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/author\/kevin-fagan\/\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Written By <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/author\/kevin-fagan\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Fagan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kevin Fagan is a longtime, award-winning reporter at The San Francisco Chronicle, specializing in homelessness, enterprise news-feature writing, breaking news and crime. He has ridden with the rails with modern-day hobos, witnessed seven prison executions, written extensively about serial killers including the Unabomber, Doodler and Zodiac, and covered disasters ranging from the Sept. 11 terror attacks at Ground Zero to California&#8217;s devastating wildfires. Homelessness remains a core focus of his, close to his heart as a journalist who cares passionately about the human condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/img\/logos\/black\/logo.svg\" alt=\"San Francisco Chronicle Homepage - Site Logo\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/img\/core\/hearst_newspapers_logo.svg\" alt=\"HEARST newspapers logo\">\u00a92023 Hearst<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Fagan Jan. 8, 2023 (SFChronicle.com) Comments Sam Quinones, one of the nation\u2019s foremost chroniclers of American drug abuse, took a stroll around&nbsp;San Francisco\u2019s Tenderloin&nbsp;last week to take a hard look at the beleaguered neighborhood\u2019s street addict scene. Like anyone else who\u2019s taken that stroll lately, he saw the brazen&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/01\/09\/a-national-poisoning-expert-on-u-s-drug-abuse-says-conditions-in-s-f-s-tenderloin-are-tragically-familiar\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24693,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24692\/revisions\/24693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}