When HarperCollins published my book, San Fransicko, in 2021, much of the mainstream news media denounced me for, they said, exaggerating the role drug addiction plays in homelessness. The Atlantic, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Times wrote piece after piece explaining that I was wrong and that the people on the street were there because they couldn’t afford the rent.
Much has changed in the last year and a half. Yesterday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed admitted, in an outdoor speech in the middle of the open drug scene, “We’re speaking out of both sides of our mouth. On the one hand, we want change, and we wanna hold people accountable. And on the other hand, we're willing to let people get away with murder.”
Shortly after, someone threw a brick at the mayor which instead hit a high school student. The mayor’s security had to hastily evacuate her and other politicians so they wouldn’t get hurt by the pro-drug activists who were protesting her.
To be sure, the onus of the blame belongs to Breed. She attracted drug dealing to the city’s downtown United Nations Plaza after opening a “supervised drug consumption site” there. And now she’s moving forward with plans to open drug sites across the city, which will push homeless addicts into residential neighborhoods.
But she’s simply doing what the mainstream news media have urged her to do for years. After all, the most prominent advocates of allowing people to sell and use hard drugs like meth and fentanyl in public places have been writers for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Chronicle, and the LA Times.
None of them has stopped to consider that it’s their advice that is ruining the city and Breed’s mayoralty. A new poll finds that were mayoral elections held today, Breed would win just 22% of the vote.
