An anti-drug activist denounced that San Francisco has become the "epicenter" of the U.S. drug crisis. In the first two months of 2022, 131 people died of overdose in the city. These figures, according to Tom Wolf, are catalyzed by organized crime and fueled by cartels, all while policymakers continue to strip the police of financial resources.
In statements to Fox, Wolf, an addict-turned-activist and founder of the charity called the Pacific Alliance for Prevention and Recovery, says that San Francisco has the highest number of overdoses per capita in the entire nation.
Unfortunately for San Francisco, we've become the epicenter of the overdose crisis in the United States. We have the highest overdose death rate per capita of any county in the United States right now, and if we don't step in and intervene – and what I mean by intervene is, we need to actually come in and take these organized drug dealers down because they are cartel-fueled, organized drug dealers that are operating on our streets.
Traffickers operating in broad daylight in San Francisco
According to Wolf, these criminals act with total impunity, and there are as many as 500 on the streets. "We have about 500 of them right now operating in San Francisco in broad daylight, right on the street for everyone to see, and we just don't have enough resources to stop them," he claimed.
This is due, in the activist's opinion, to the shortage of police officers in the city. San Francisco is one of the pioneers of the defund the police movement, and crime is extremely prevalent. "We're down 500 police officers in our city," Wolf said. "We took $28 million of funding away from the police two years ago. Nobody wants to come to the city to become a cop. People are retiring and leaving from the police force. So, yeah, we're really under the gun."
Wolf lamented that, despite his repeated demands, the authorities reduce all of the drug problems to a public health crisis to avoid considering it as a crime problem. "They're saying it and framing it more in that, well, this is just a public health crisis, it's not a criminal justice issue when the reality is, is that it is both of those things," criticized the activist, who warned that "when you're ignoring one piece of the solution… you've heard that term half measures avail us nothing. That's basically what San Francisco is stuck in. They're stuck in doing these half measures."
