How San Francisco’s Open-Air Drug Dealers Work(sfchronicle.com)
sfchronicle.com
How San Francisco’s Open-Air Drug Dealers Work
https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-drug-trade-how-dealers-work/
10 comments
Some of my favorite bits from this article are:
"The Chronicle interviewed numerous dealers who were deported but re-entered the country illegally and returned to the Tenderloin shortly thereafter. One has done it nine times."
“One said he moves furniture, another said he was an Amazon delivery driver in the morning and sold drugs in the evening.”
"The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”
"The Chronicle interviewed numerous dealers who were deported but re-entered the country illegally and returned to the Tenderloin shortly thereafter. One has done it nine times."
“One said he moves furniture, another said he was an Amazon delivery driver in the morning and sold drugs in the evening.”
"The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”
"Asked recently whether he was afraid of San Francisco police, a dealer let out a loud laugh. Yes and no, he said.
“They know what’s going on, but I don’t know. If they want to clean it, they can clean it,” the dealer said. “Sometimes they do the job, but it’s like, just for the news, like, ‘Oh, we did the job good.’ If they wanted to clean it good, they could do that.”
The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”"
So the police seem to just let this happen without caring about its impact on the citizens that pay their salaries? Got it.
“They know what’s going on, but I don’t know. If they want to clean it, they can clean it,” the dealer said. “Sometimes they do the job, but it’s like, just for the news, like, ‘Oh, we did the job good.’ If they wanted to clean it good, they could do that.”
The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”"
So the police seem to just let this happen without caring about its impact on the citizens that pay their salaries? Got it.
> So the police seem to just let this happen without caring about its impact on the citizens that pay their salaries? Got it.
As long as the demand exists, the supply will come.
If you want to fix this, you have to get the users into the medical system to get them off the drugs.
But, you see, that takes money--real money. And nobody actually cares about the drug users--they just want them out of sight.
So, the charade will continue. And so it goes.
As long as the demand exists, the supply will come.
If you want to fix this, you have to get the users into the medical system to get them off the drugs.
But, you see, that takes money--real money. And nobody actually cares about the drug users--they just want them out of sight.
So, the charade will continue. And so it goes.
I wonder if many social problems are being "made worse" by the baumol effect.
As productivity goes up in some areas of the economy, the relative cost of dealing with social problems goes up. Doctors, nurses, social workers, police - these professions are essential but not very scalable.
You would expect that as you grow the economy, you have more resources to deal with homelessness, violence, drug addiction etc, but paradoxically the exact resources needed to address these problems are getting relatively more expensive every year compared to other goods.
I expect these problems should keep "getting worse" in dollar terms as broader productivity increases.
As productivity goes up in some areas of the economy, the relative cost of dealing with social problems goes up. Doctors, nurses, social workers, police - these professions are essential but not very scalable.
You would expect that as you grow the economy, you have more resources to deal with homelessness, violence, drug addiction etc, but paradoxically the exact resources needed to address these problems are getting relatively more expensive every year compared to other goods.
I expect these problems should keep "getting worse" in dollar terms as broader productivity increases.
It’s not a money issue. These cities have all the money they can into reducing “homelessness” aka open air drug markets. It’s a policy issue. Get these guys off the street and tell them to get clean.
The money being spent on "fixing homelessness" is a small fraction of the money that was being spent on the (admittedly terrible) mental health medical facilities that California shut down back in the 1970s.
"A failing mental health system leaves this mother pleading: Keep him in jail"
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-12/one-moms...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/...
"A failing mental health system leaves this mother pleading: Keep him in jail"
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-12-12/one-moms...
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/story/...
I see a lot of "why is it allowed to continue" comments, but it's not clear to me that more police intervention would change much.
You arrest one group of people, put them in jail - ok, now you have a market vacuum, what's going to happen?
You can push it a bit further underground, increase the prices a bit, but as long as the same old incentives are there you'll see the same outcomes.
You're only changing the faces on the street unless you can do something more fundamental.
You arrest one group of people, put them in jail - ok, now you have a market vacuum, what's going to happen?
You can push it a bit further underground, increase the prices a bit, but as long as the same old incentives are there you'll see the same outcomes.
You're only changing the faces on the street unless you can do something more fundamental.
What are you proposing?
Why is it allowed to continue?
Qui bono?
Qui bono?
No cartel wars, no kingpins, just efficiently distributed systems and networks of trust. Clever bits of business work tucked into the broader systematic cruelties, like dealers using homeless people as holders to distribute and deflect risk. The logistics of feeding the dealers. Heroin dealers invoking moral codes to explain why they don't sell fentanyl. Little things that show how this giant bogeyman is so much more of the banal kind of evil as everything else, growing out of wreckage as much as it leaves in its wake.