The People Selling Drugs Here Are Merely Pawns

August 15, 2023 12:55 PM

In a nearby town square, a skinny child in a Steph Curry T-shirt climbs a tree. A few blocks away, a three-wheeled mototaxi whizzes by, a San Francisco Giants sticker affixed to its bumper ... More extravagant emblems of San Francisco appear unexpectedly and often, alongside crumbling adobe huts, stray roosters and heaps of singed garbage. Handsome new homes, some mansions by local standards, some mansions by any standard, rise behind customized iron gates emblazoned with San Francisco 49ers or Golden State Warriors logos. from This is the Hometown of San Francisco’s Drug Dealers [SF Chronicle]
posted by chavenet (24 comments total)

Well that sure is a lot of words to say “we need more of the war on drugs now plz.”

Given the way that reactionaries gravitate toward every story about the depravity of San Francisco and the need for law and order there, it it exceptionally irresponsible to write an extended piece saying hey, a ton of the suffering you see on the streets every day comes directly from these specific immigrants. Especially considering the anecdote in there about the US mining company that promised all those well-paying jobs and then moved out, and the entire sordid history of the US intelligence apparatus destabilizing Central American governments and supporting military dictators. The US government swoops in to all these poor countries, destroys their local economies and governments to the point where drug dealing and making exceptionally dangerous border crossings seems like the best option, and is then shocked, SHOCKED when people die from overdoses and we can’t arrest our way out of that crisis. Great system we got here.

Also, it bears repeating on EVERY story about the overdose crisis that there is no bright line between drug users and drug dealers. Every one of the people I know who overdosed fatally got their drugs from a friend, a partner, someone in their community. Targeting “dealers” typically doesn’t do shit about larger cartels, it catches ordinary people in the rawest stages of grief over losing someone tremendously important and subjects them to the criminal justice system. The cruelty is the point.
posted by I am a Sock, I am an Island at 2:04 PM on August 15, 2023 [51 favorites]

Please be aware that this series is full of significant inaccuracies, as well as straight-up racist stereotypes. There has been a LOT of pushback on it, especially from the immigrant rights advocates in San Francisco. I'll pull up some of the links and post them here, but this whole series is a fucked-up Pulitzer-bait piece of crap.
posted by gingerbeer at 2:56 PM on August 15, 2023 [44 favorites]

Dear SF Chronicle: No, Hondurans aren’t responsible for the City’s fentanyl crisis

Twitter thread from FREE SF with point-by-point criticism (in full transparency, I'm a member of this coalition)
posted by gingerbeer at 2:59 PM on August 15, 2023 [41 favorites]

Thanks, gingerbeer, for the additional articles with some eye-opening context.
posted by chavenet at 3:15 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Isn't fentanyl like dirt cheap on the street? How do you make huge money off a a pill that goes for $3?

I mean, you make it up with volume but...

So many things wrong with this article.
posted by Windopaene at 3:32 PM on August 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Podcast from El Tecolote addressing the series.

SF Chronicle’s “Honduran Drug Dealers” Series Fuels Xenophobia

Supervisor defends Hondurans, economic impact of immigrants
posted by gingerbeer at 4:01 PM on August 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

Isn't fentanyl like dirt cheap on the street? How do you make huge money off a a pill that goes for $3?

I am some years out of date with any of this but $3 sounds implausibly low not to be a bulk price already. I’d be surprised if it’s not 5x that for one.
posted by atoxyl at 4:45 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I really wish they wouldn't blame foreigners for this - SF problems are home grown.
posted by carlodio at 4:53 PM on August 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

Hot-take alert: the SF Chronicle is generally so out of touch and contemptuous of the lived reality of the majority of San Franciscans — it's mainly a vehicle for real estate speculation and restaurant reviews, with some "well meaning?" navel-gazey classism and broken windows/liberal racism thrown in for good measure.

Guardian article on the UCSF study on homelessness.

Cal Matters summary of the UCSF study on homelessness.

KQED radio report on the UCSF study.
posted by nikoniko at 5:12 PM on August 15, 2023 [13 favorites]

Fuck's sake, legalisation can't be any worse than this.

But you know what could be better? Safe and regulated supply with the money saved on punishment instead invested in helping people to receover from the damage that the War on Drugs is causing.
posted by happyinmotion at 5:32 PM on August 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

Hmm.. I read the first half. The author seemed to be clear on the evidence that tough on crime and the drug war were failed strategies that harm people of color, and rightfully framed small volume immigrant drug sellers as pawns in the fentanyl industry.. but I'll finish reading and read the critiques.
posted by latkes at 6:12 PM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

There’s no proof that that’s how the people building those houses made money selling drugs. There was an article a few years ago (can’t find it now, maybe it was in a defunct weekly) about cooks from Yucatán who worked in San Francisco, and sent money home and built houses back in Mexico that also harkened back to San Francisco.
posted by larrybob at 7:13 PM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Well, I read the first half expecting the second to be about the kingpins that trap desperate poor migrants into selling drugs on the streets for a pittance, but the article never really went beyond low-level operators in the drug game. There's never going to be an end to the misery caused by illicit drugs unless we just legalise everything (causing an increase in the misery caused by legal drugs, I guess, which is already significant) or actually do something about the supply of those illicit drugs. Police forces everywhere seem to target those standing on street corners, knowing full well there's a dozen more waiting to take their place if they get arrested. If they wanted to actually do something, they'd have to start looking at people with influence in the community that are the actual power behind illicit drugs. But I guess it's easier just to keep churning low-level dealers through the system and keep the arrest numbers up.
posted by dg at 7:15 PM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Found the article about people who returned to Yucatán after cooking jobs in San Francisco and built buildings with paintings of San Francisco landmarks:
Dreaming of San Francisco in the Yucatan
By Monica Ortiz Uribe
PRI's The World
29 March 2015
posted by larrybob at 7:31 PM on August 15, 2023 [12 favorites]

Yeah, the war on drugs didn't solve the problem, but it's also pretty clear that total inaction doesn't work, either. Can we maybe just try aggressively jailing fentanyl dealers, in addition to providing help for addicts? Fentanyl dealing is murder. Dealing other drugs cut with fentanyl is murder. 10x moreso than the next worst street drug.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:22 PM on August 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

If we couldn't even agree on whether enforcing speed limits is a good policy or not in the other thread, there is really no hope that the broader public could agree on drug policy. Most policy is driven by emotions because there's not much in the way of data that people with opposing viewpoints can agree on.

On the other extreme, there's Singapore, which regularly executes people caught with drugs. In July, Singapore executed a woman caught with 31 grams of heroin, and a man caught with 50 grams of heroin. (15 grams is the threshold at which one is considered a trafficker and thus receive the mandatory death penalty).

Unsurprisingly, most prisoners on death row in Singapore are Malay and Indian minorities which tend to be much poorer than the majority 75% Chinese in Singapore.

Drug possession is considered strict liability like drink driving or possession of child porn - no need for the prosecutor to prove intent - so virtually all cases lead straight to execution. Detractors say there are virtually no reliable statistics on illicit drug use in Singapore so government claims as to the efficacy of their policy is suspect. Proponents point to the safe, orderly and clean environment as an example of the needs of the many outweighing the rights of the few.
posted by xdvesper at 11:18 PM on August 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

"Hot-take alert: the SF Chronicle is generally so out of touch and contemptuous of the lived reality of the majority of San Franciscans — it's mainly a vehicle for real estate speculation and restaurant reviews, with some "well meaning?" navel-gazey classism and broken windows/liberal racism thrown in for good measure. "

That's a very insightful observation.

I live in Oregon and have found the same theme in the Oregonian. Their constant breathless plugging of trendy real estate is grotesque to say the least, given the obvious connection between that real estate's seemingly inexorable rise in value and the long present problem the city has with citizens who cannot afford a place to live. They actually blame the phenomenon on "drugs" and "permissiveness" when the housing problem that results in people camping in the woods or elsewhere has been present since just before the Great Depression... a time when Portland was certainly not permissive at all. I had some hope for a little bit things might change when all the protests were going on, because it looked like an opportunity for them to re-appraise what led to that phenomenon was at hand - but instead they went right back to it.
posted by cybrcamper at 2:39 AM on August 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

Until the Sacklers are in prison and the media stops publishing "policeman touched fentanyl, overdosed!" articles, I don't want to hear anything these mouthpieces have to say. Thank you for attending my TED Talk.
posted by nofundy at 5:01 AM on August 16, 2023 [16 favorites]

I'm on a group chat with healthcare workers around the country and it's really wild how many hospitals are buying into the "I touched fentanyl" propaganda. Nurses being asked to write "fentanyl exposure policies" for their hospitals - these same nurses spill fentanyl all the time (with zero ill effect to anyone - it's just normal to have some random medication waste) when they are medicating patients. Totally non-rational.

In my mind, living in the Bay Area, I just don't see the "open air drug market" as the actual problem? I see the extremes of income inequality, homelessness and poverty as the problem that would be best for government to focus it's resources on?

Taking on international cartels is a project that is above what SFPD could do even if we liked cops. And people take drugs for a reason. (Others have already debunked the idea that people selling drugs are some separate population from people using drugs. It would be great if the world was divided into good guys vs bad guys)

Speaking of racialization of drugs: I enjoyed this book talk and interview, have the book on my to-read list.
posted by latkes at 6:41 AM on August 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

This CBC article from the late 90's says something similar about Honduran immigrants in Vancouver. I remember the news coverage at the time was laying the problems at their feet, which was the same bullshit that many people are pointing out in this thread.
posted by monkeymike at 7:01 AM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Hot-take alert: the SF Chronicle is generally so out of touch and contemptuous of the lived reality of the majority of San Franciscans — it's mainly a vehicle for real estate speculation and restaurant reviews, with some "well meaning?" navel-gazey classism and broken windows/liberal racism thrown in for good measure.

I wouldn't know, because even when I was briefly subscribed to my wildly expensive local paper, the paywall and advertising was structured in a way that made the site basically unusable. I'm of the age where I have to sometimes remind myself that it's important to pay for news or whatever, but man what a bad experience they're selling over there.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:12 AM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can we maybe just try aggressively jailing fentanyl dealers, in addition to providing help for addicts? Fentanyl dealing is murder. Dealing other drugs cut with fentanyl is murder.

This mindset seems stuck on the idea of fentanyl as mainly an adulterant being snuck into the drug supply by some middleman, rather than one of the main products that manufacturers make and wholesalers sell and users knowingly buy. What do you expect low/mid level dealers to do here, demand real dope only from their suppliers? Stick to crack and meth? Maybe a few would, but long as fent is available cheap at the top level, it’s a huge opportunity for anybody who is willing to take the risk of selling it, and that’s not even getting into the overlap (as these articles actually address) between low-level dealers and users. It’s really not the most rational business at that level to begin with.

What it would take to reduce top level supply is another question but even there I’m a little skeptical that it’s a good idea to target efforts against a single drug, because there are other classes of ultrapotent opioids that manufacturers could jump to.

If we want to say - okay, it’s better for people to be using heroin than fentanyl, I think we might as well just go for it and introduce a medicalized channel to get high quality heroin, while at the same time targeting top level illicit supply (which probably takes some international coordination).
posted by atoxyl at 10:33 AM on August 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

Can we maybe just try aggressively jailing fentanyl dealers, in addition to providing help for addicts? Fentanyl dealing is murder. Dealing other drugs cut with fentanyl is murder. 10x moreso than the next worst street drug.

Public Defender here. We already do this. Extremely aggressively. I have never once met what the movies or TV would style a drug dealer. Dealing is virtually always a side hustle for people struggling to get by and (so often!) a side gig that addicts pick up to support their habit.

I can't tell you how many homeless "dealers" I've seen who are dealing because they use and are using because they're homeless (because sleeping in the street is terrible and people will mediate that with any substance that will cut the cold, boredom, fear, and wakefulness). Or how many of those dealers are getting taken in by police in full body armor like they're dealing with a narco from Sicario.

Poverty is the problem. Poverty and homelessness. And once you've got both, you're going to have people taking whatever there is. Fentanyl if that's what's available. You want to solve the drug death problem, legalize them and provide a clean supply.

You want to solve these problems, like everything else in this country? Work on the poverty, the inequality
posted by TheProfessor at 2:34 PM on August 16, 2023 [18 favorites]

You want to solve these problems, like everything else in this country? Work on the poverty, the inequality

Amen. Say it again for the people in the back who have plugged their ears, covered their eyes, yet can't seem to stop yelling about personal responsibility into a bullhorn.
posted by nikoniko at 1:11 PM on August 17, 2023 [2 favorites]