With the new Mayor’s mass arrest strategy, 50% more people are dying in the streets.
by Joshua Baltodano
May 26, 2025
With Daniel Lurie’s dumbfounding mass arrest strategy, he’s not only wasting tremendous amounts of resources on incarcerating people, but also driving up death tolls. From January to March, his first three months in office, there was a 50% increase in overdose deaths (over 200 deaths total). The Triage Center on 6th Street, though created to help the homeless find shelter and sobriety, is just leading to more arrests and charges, if not diverting more drug users to 16th Street Mission Bart Station area.
But the withdrawal of harm reduction measures during an opioid crisis is by far one of the most simple-minded policies anyone can implement (given the past decade and SF health research data available). The Mayor pulled back funding for harm reduction supplies such as clean pipes, foil, and straws for fentanyl users. The distribution of needles and narcan will remain.
Regardless of your opinion of people using substances, smoking fentanyl by the form of a pipe and foil is incredibly safer than physically injecting yourself with a needle. It reduces, if not completely prevents, potential spread of infections. With no harm reduction measures in place, overdose deaths will continue to dramatically rise.
In closing is a reel from one of the OG’s from SF’s Dope Project, Antonio Chavez, who can speak first-hand about the impacts of removing harm reduction measures.
Antonio Chavez is also the founder of Lost Soul Courier in San Francisco which distributes free narcan to anyone. If you’d like to donate or learn more please visit their website.