San Francisco's open air drug dens

 Daily Mail:

A new 'linkage center' aimed at connecting homeless street addicts with drug rehab facilities opened in San Francisco last week - but distressing images show an open air illicit drug consumption site that is now littered with needles and crowded with addicts shooting up in broad daylight.

Images 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.

The center, which opened on January 18, is part of the San Francisco Mayor London Breed's Tenderloin Emergency Intervention plan introduced last year. The linkage center is located at 1172 Market Street, in the United Nations Plaza. The supervised drug consumption area is an outdoor fenced section of the linkage center - just blocks away from the city's court house, San Francisco City Hall and the Civic Center. Aerial footage of the area shows the city's Pioneer Monument overrun with homeless tents.

In December, Breed declared a state of emergency in Tenderloin and announced a sweeping crackdown on open air drug use and drug dealing in the downtown neighborhood - one of the city's poorest and most drug-infested areas.

The Tenderloin 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.
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California clearly does not have a handle on its drug problem or its crime problem.  Tolerance for self-destructive conduct has not improved the lot of the addicts or the city.  No wonder intelligent people are fleeing the area.