San Francisco’s Booze for Drunks Program Draws Backlash

San Francisco Democrats are pioneering a new trend in so-called “harm reduction” practices: giving alcoholics free alcohol.

Although the Golden City has been handing out free booze for years, the program was thrust into the spotlight in early May following a thread on X by Adam Nathan, a tech entrepreneur and chair of the advisory board for the San Francisco chapter of the Salvation Army.

“Did you know San Francisco spends $2 million a year on a ‘Managed Alcohol Program?’” Nathan asked in a post that has racked up nearly a million views. “It provides free alcohol to people struggling with chronic alcoholism who are mostly homeless.”

The story might sound like a headline from The Babylon Bee, but subsequent inquiries from several news outlets have revealed that the program, known as MAP for short, is exactly what Nathan describes.

According to documents from the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Behavioral Health Services, MAP provides “accommodation (temporary or permanent housing), medical supervision, and social supports alongside regularly administered doses of beverage alcohol to stabilize drinking patterns for people with severe alcohol addiction.” Alcoholics can enter the hotel and receive “doses” of beer and vodka administered by nurses to keep them at a “safe level of intoxication.”

The program is run out of a former hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, an area that has become notorious for high drug use, homelessness, and violent crime. It also actually costs about $5 million per year – all paid by California taxpayers. Even more shockingly, city government data shows MAP served just 55 people throughout its first four years of existence.

In other words, the city spent more than $363,000 per person who used the program – just to assist them in getting drunk “safely.”

MAP defenders assert that it improves the lives of alcoholics who use it, the vast majority of whom are homeless. In an interview with PBS subsidiary KQED, UC Berkley Professor Keanan Joyner argued that “the science is very clear at this point that harm reduction as a general strategy for treating alcohol and other drug use disorders is very effective. It’s a very positive thing.”

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has also alleged that the MAP program resulted in a reduction of usage of emergency services and fewer hospital visits, as well as saving taxpayers $1.7 million per year.

But at $5 million per year, the program costs nearly three times that supposed savings. Moreover, as critics have noted, it does nothing to set individuals with alcohol use disorders on the path to recovery. Instead, it merely feeds them “manageable” doses of the substance that has destroyed their lives.

KQED also notes that the goal of the MAP program “isn’t to reduce patients’ alcohol use or lead to abstinence but to increase their safety and overall quality of life.” According the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s own report, “Although clients used fewer emergency services while in the program, some who left the facility returned to relatively frequent utilization of these services.”

In other words, the program was at best a stopgap for homeless alcoholics, and at worst an enabler of their addictions.

MAP is just the latest grotesque outgrowth of the so-called “harm reduction” approach to addiction that has taken hold on the left in recent years. Advocates of harm reduction argue that the goal of addiction services shouldn’t actually be to break addiction and set people on a path to recovery, but rather to “reduce negative consequences” of alcohol and drug abuse.

The National Harm Reduction Coalition states on its website that it is a movement of “social justice built on a belief in, and respect for, the rights of people who use drugs.” The group’s “principles” section asserts that the goal of drug intervention should be to “minimize its harmful effects.”

Another increasingly common example of “harm reduction” popping up in cities throughout the country are so-called “supervised injection sites,” where the government provides a location and even needles for drug users to get high. Last year, the San Francisco city government again found itself in hot water after stories circulated about “harm reduction kits” being given to drug users containing everything necessary for ingesting drugs besides the actual drugs.

But if harm reduction advocates had it their way, the government would provide the drugs too, just like it is providing alcohol. That’s already the case in Canada, where publicly funded nonprofits are permitted to “provide drug users with a safe supply of drugs and with spaces in which people can supervise one another while using them.”

Yet, after years of harm reduction advocates running the show in San Francisco, addiction rates and homelessness have skyrocketed across the city. A February report found that almost half of all San Francisco drug users came from out of state to take advantage of the city’s programs. Additionally, a May report found that San Francisco’s homeless population jumped seven percent despite a crackdown on “street camping.”

While claiming to be “compassionate” and “caring,” California liberals have once again only succeeded in demonstrating why subsidizing misery only leads to more misery.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.