Drug use in the Tenderloin is not some new phenomenon that came in with Boudin, or one that will go away now that Boudin is out. Even the article acknowledges

Drug use in the Tenderloin is not some new phenomenon that came in with Boudin, or one that will go away now that Boudin is out. Even the article acknowledges it at the end: > "Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the low-income, single-room occupancy hotels in the area, isn’t a fan of Boudin, but he says the city’s mayor and police department are largely responsible for the area’s problems. “Police have been blaming DAs since the 1980s; this is nothing new,” he said. “Chesa has done a great job taking the flack off the SFPD because all of the recall movement people want to make sure he’s blamed for everything,” he said before the June 7 recall vote. If you want to take the cash away from the drug cartels, use Portugal's policy: addicts get whatever drugs they want via decriminalization, but they go into public health treatment programs immediately rather than getting the incarceration/fine runaround. Police in Portugal don't ignore addicts, they work with public health care professionals to get them into treatment programs. That's what's entirely lacking in the USA, of course - a rational public health care policy. https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decriminalization-are-drugs-legal-in-portugal/ https://www.portugal.com/op-ed/portugal-drug-laws-under-decr...