Gavin Newsom VETOES bill allowing drug-injection sites citing ‘unintended consequences’

California Gov Gavin Newsom on Monday vetoed a bill that would have allowed certain cities to open supervised drug-injection sites.

The idea of the bill was to provide drug addicts with controlled substances in a supervised environment, where they would receive sterile needles and could be connected with a rehabilitation center.

The hope was to stem the rising tide of fatal overdoses in the state. But in a veto letter, the governor wrote that he had concerns about the ‘unintended consequences’ of the bill.

‘I have long supported the cutting edge of harm reduction strategies,’ Newsom wrote in the letter to legislators.

‘However, I am acutely concerned about operations of safe injection sites without strong, engaged local leadership and well-documented, vetted and thoughtful operational and sustainability plans.’

The governor went on to say he was worried about ‘a world of unintended consequences’ that could result from authorizing an unlimited number of sites.

‘It is possible that these sites would help improve the safety and health of our urban areas, but if done without a strong plan, they could work against this purpose.

‘These unintended consequences in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland cannot be taken lightly,’ he added. ‘Worsening drug consumption challenges in these areas is not a risk we can take.’

Still, the governor said in the letter he was directing the state’s secretary of health and human services to work with local leaders in order to create statewide opening standards for these facilities. 

Injection stations would provide drug users with sterilized needles to shoot up under the direction of staff trained to deal with an overdose. A safe injection site is pictured here

A woman was slumped over in a wheelchair, her pants down around her ankles, preparing to inject a needle into her thigh

Photos obtained by DailyMail.com showed homeless people continuing to use illegal narcotics on the streets surrounding the injection site at the Tenderloin Linkage Center

Senate Bill 57 would have allowed San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland — as well as Los Angeles County — to set up supervised injection facilities in communities struggling with rampant drug use and frequent overdoes.

At the centers, drug users would be offered supplies like clean needles as they use illegal drugs under the watch of staff members who are trained to intervene in overdoses. From there, they could be connected to treatment centers. 

Such injection sites have already operated in New York City at the New York Harm Reduction in East Harlem and The Corner Project in Washington Heights. 

Scott Wiener, the California lawmaker who wrote the bill, described the veto on Monday as a missed opportunity to address one of the most pressing problems in California.

He said in a statement to the New York Times that the proposal was ‘not a radical bill by any stretch of the imagination.

‘We don’t need additional studies or working groups to determine whether safe consumption sites are effective,’ Wiener asserted.

‘We know from decades of experience and numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies that they work.’

Wiener went on to call the veto ‘a major setback,’ but vowed he and other legislators would continue to press for the state to ‘focus on drug use and addiction as the health issues that they are.’ 

But opponents of the proposal, including Republican state lawmakers and local law enforcement groups have argued that setting up the sites would encourage illicit drug use while also failing to require users seek treatment.

They point to a pilot program started earlier this year in San Francisco has resulted in addicts illicitly taking drugs in the middle of the day, as elementary school kids had to walk home through the crowd.

It has also likely contributed to a 7 percent increase in crime over last year, with assaults up 12 percent and larceny thefts up nearly 18 percent.

The streets surrounding the Linkage Center were filled with drug paraphernalia

The rampant drug use has also likely contributed to a rise in crime in the area, with overall crime up nearly 8 percent from last year

In December, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin area and announced a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown neighborhood.

The area has long been an epicenter of homelessness and drug use, but city officials said the problem has worsened as the national opioid crisis escalated over the course of the pandemic. 

Announcing a crime crackdown, Breed argued that San Francisco officers should get aggressive and ‘less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city’, as she went back on her plans to defund the police.

‘It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,’ she said. ‘And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies.’

‘We are in a crisis and we need to respond accordingly,’ she continued. ‘Too many people are dying in this city, too many people are sprawled on our streets. We have to meet people where they are.’ 

Breed said that rapid drug intervention is needed because about two people a day are dying of overdoses, mostly from fentanyl.

‘The work that we have in place after our assessment allow us this ability through this emergency declaration to move quickly, to move fast, to change the conditions – specifically of the Tenderloin community’ she said. 

‘This is necessary in order to see a difference.’ 

Mayor London Breed launched an emergency police intervention in December aimed at curbing open drug use, brazen home break-ins and other criminal behaviors taking place in San Francisco’s crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood

Just a few days later, Breed announced the opening of the ‘linkage center,’ aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities.  

The center was equipped to serve up to 100 people at a time who are suffering from drug use and mental health issues, connecting with long-term and short-term services like health care and housing. 

It also included a supervised drug consumption area outside. 

The mayor and members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors have long advocated a supervised drug consumption site, and purchased two properties in the Tenderloin to serve people suffering from addiction.

‘Our work in the Tenderloin requires all of our City departments and community partners working together to address the major challenges we know exist,’ Mayor Breed said in a release.

‘As part of that work, this Linkage Center will help us create a space for people who are struggling with addiction and other challenges to get immediate support, and then transition into longer term care and housing. 

‘This is hard work, and I appreciate everyone joining in partnership to make a difference for the people of the Tenderloin.’

But soon images emerged of an open air illicit drug consumption site littered with needles and crowded with addicts shooting up in broad daylight.

Photos taken by DailyMail.com show a woman slumped over in a wheelchair, her pants down around her ankles, preparing to inject a needle into her thigh. The woman sitting on the ground next to her has a needle to her neck.  

Many others are sitting on the ground among trash, empty food containers and dirty blankets, as they fumble in with drug paraphernalia in the cold weather. 

Aerial photo also showed the city’s Pioneer Monument overrun with homeless tents. 

A pilot program started in San Francisco earlier this year has resulted in addicts illicitly taking drugs in the middle of the day

The area was also overrun with homeless camps, like the one seen here

By July, shocking video posted online showed elementary school kids filing off the 14 transit line in the Golden Gate City at 8th Street and Mission, walking past dozens of drug users passing out on the sidewalk.

‘This is no back ally,’ Ricci Wynne tweeted. ‘This is the main artery of the city that has been hijacked bye [SIC] drug dealers and now is Pure filth,

‘I’m just trying to bring the images of the streets and the conditions to [the public],’ he said in a separate video. ‘Bring the awareness up…I’m trying to push for a change and try to see if we can get the streets back because we’re losing out here.’

The kids appeared chipper as they head back home after their classes in stark contrast to the addicts scowling as they sit on the garbage-strewn pavement shooting up.

‘Now ask yourself this question, would you want your children to walk through this squalor just to get home from school? @JoeBiden @VP @SpeakerPelosi @SenFeinstein @LondonBreed @SFPDChief #DoBetter #democrats #politics #Drugs #California #crime #DoYourJob #NA.’ 

Wynne, who describes himself as a ‘career criminal’ and a recovering drug addict, frequently posts videos of addicts on the streets or the piles of garbage and used needles that they leave behind.

Ricci Wynne, 37, a career criminal and recovering addict, documented how school children were forced to pass by dozens of drug users passing out on the sidewalk.

The kids appeared chipper as they head back home after their classes in stark contrast to the addicts scowling as they sit on the garbage-strewn pavement shooting up 

In the aftermath, Gary McCoy, the vice president of public affairs and policy at non-profit HealthRIGHT 360 — which runs the controversial Tenderloin Linkage Center — was accused of exaggerating the number of people it helped.

The organization recorded it was making 659 ‘meaningful engagements’ for the week ending February 7, meaning it was actively helping the nearly 700 drug users by directing them to clean syringes or services rather than just observing them while they shot up.

But in an email to colleagues, Dr. Rob Hoffman, special project manager with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said he and a colleague had visited the linkage center over the same period, and wrote: ‘I observed the HR360 staff and did not see anything that can account for the high numbers of meaningful engagements.’

Instead of handling the problem itself, press officers at the Department of Public Health apparently tried to minimize the issue.

In response to a query from a reporter working for the San Francisco Standard News about Health360’s tweaked figures on February 23, Alison Hawkes, director of communications for the department, sent over a heavily-modified email which replaced words such as ‘mistake’ and ‘inaccurately’ with more PR-friendly terms.

The original statement, written by Dr Matthew Goldman, read: ‘ Part-way through the most recent reporting period, the TLC metrics team discovered that one of the CBOs was inaccurately recording data on engagements… This mistake has since been resolved.’

Hawkes, though, smoothed out his words and changed them to say that ‘one of providers at the site was defining engagements in a way inconsistent with other teams on the site.’

She also changed ‘mistakenly’ counted to ‘categorized all visits.’   

At the same time, DailyMail.com revealed that just 18 of the 23,367 visitors to the site between January and the end of March had been given medical treatment, or referred to rehab – equivalent to 0.7 percent of everyone who’s passed through its doors during that time period.

HealthRIGHT 360 is given tens of millions of dollars by the City of San Francisco to run drug outreach programs.