Greenberg: Open Letter to SF City Hall over Drug Addiction Fiasco

San Francisco’s City Hall is a cesspool of dishonesty, cowardice and complicity, orchestrating a drug crisis that’s devouring our city while you, our elected and appointed leaders, cower behind empty promises and half-baked policies.

Here’s the evidence: The UCSF and Department of Public Health just-reported analysis  New data reveals how many serious drug users at risk of overdose in SF  and isn’t just mere data—it’s a damning indictment: 37,500 San Franciscans, nearly 5% of the city — housed and unhoused — are confirmed hooked on drugs, teetering at death’s door. This isn’t a crisis; it’s a betrayal; City Hall’s spineless elite have let addiction metastasize for decades. And now we have a report by UCSF putting this in writing, and your directly a part of this.

Dwarfing the City’s estimated 8,200 homeless, this drug addiction report exposes leadership so appalling derelict, it’s practically handing out syringes with a smile. You, San Francisco’s officials, aren’t just failing—you’ve been accomplices, bankrolling addiction with no-strings-attached handouts and housing, watching lives collapse (literally) as overdoses persist.

We are tired of believing you, tired of supporting you, tired of listening to rhetoric and doublespeak, tired of taxes upon taxes grabbing our hard-earned money in the name of compassion, dignity and “justice”, we are disgusted at your unaccountable untraceable appropriation of our money you’ve been “trusted” to spend. It’s outright fraud. And then you dare blame some boogiemen 3,000 miles east in DC for ails actually perpetrated by you right here. Reality is, each of you individually and collectively are responsible for this unconscionable disaster.

For years, we’ve watched this drug catastrophe play out: we’ve listened to you, we’ve written about it, warned others about it , and now we observe it happening . You’ve treated addiction like a simple PR problem, not the deadly plague it is. Instead of working to halt the cycle of dependency, you’ve built an ideological shrine to it, propping up policy after failed policy. Your city-funded SROs, housing, shelters and hotels, meant to house the vulnerable, are now the killing fields—three-quarters of overdose deaths happen among the housed. Your response? Provide free naloxone and then pat yourselves on the back—a pathetic dodge by a city choking on its own failure. Your harm-reduction fetish, dishing out smoking supplies, isn’t compassion; it’s enabling and abandoning users to their demons without a lifeline to recovery. You’re not saving lives—you’re subsidizing death. Monetizing hospice.

And the gall of your financial betrayal. You pour taxpayer money into housing that traps people in addiction’s grip, ignoring the 19% of homeless San Franciscans who cite drug use as their downfall. By refusing to tie shelter to treatment, you’ve locked 37,500 souls in a revolving door of despair. Black San Franciscans, dying at disproportionate rates, are among the collateral damage in your moral cowardice—a racist neglect you shrug off while preaching “equity.” You’ve created a permanent addict underclass over the courage to demand accountability.

The evidence of your failure is a graveyard. The 2008 voter mandate for instant treatment access has become a a complete failure. Overdose deaths, briefly down in 2024, are once again spiking in 2025, yet Mayor Daniel Lurie’s rehashed platitudes about beds and outreach are an insult to the dying. Your 2017 Safe Injection Site debate evaporated (because such sites are illegal), and fentanyl’s body count is met with your silence. Why are you funneling cash into enabling addiction instead of scaling medication-assisted treatment or contingency management?

This isn’t just incompetence—it’s a moral rot. The 37,500 addicts aren’t mere statistics on paper; they’re San Franciscans—neighbors, families, friends—many suffering in silence, abandoned by your policies. Your harm-reduction freebies and no-accountability housing guarantee the cycle’s perpetual survival. Your recent crackdowns on open-air drug use, born of public fury, just push users to die alone indoors—where’s the rehabilitation to match your raids? You’ve turned San Francisco, a supposed progressive beacon, into a dystopian drug den and end-stage hospice.

You must act, or you’re complicit. Link housing to mandatory treatment, forcing accountability to break addiction’s hold. Pair enforcement with outreach that brings users to care, not clean needles. Stop incentivizing addicts to come to San Francisco for handouts.

You, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and Mayor Lurie, are the architects and enablers of this humanitarian disaster. Every overdose death stains your legacy, a testament to your reign. You’ve failed a city that trusted you, turning hope into body bags.