By Annika Hom : sfstandard – excerpt
“I’ve known many people who are on welfare and I’ve known many people at City Hall,” said a political consultant, “and there are many more people at City Hall who are high on drugs.”
Mayor London Breed and three moderate supervisors said on Tuesday that a proposal to drug test San Francisco welfare recipients would keep individuals “accountable” and help shepherd those struggling with addiction into treatment.
But more than half a dozen addiction experts and political figures told Mission Local that, if the goal of the measure is to address people’s addictions, the plan is likely to backfire.
Tell welfare recipients to undergo drug testing or risk their cash, and “they’re going to say — pardon my French — ‘Eff you, I’ll find something else,’” said Dr. William Andereck, a doctor of internal medicine who runs the ethics committee at Sutter Health/California Pacific Medical Center…
The city’s Human Services Agency, which administers the program, said that some 20 percent of those receiving cash assistance during 2018 to 2020 had reported substance use disorder. Twenty percent of today’s program enrollees is 1,040.
Yet presently there are almost no slots available for drug treatment, according to Vitka Eisen, the CEO of nonprofit HealthRight 360, which provides addiction services across the city… (more)
Even though it is coming out of a SF publication, the article should be informative to people everywhere. I am somewhat shocked that people think diagnosing mental illness is easy. Who are these people that missed basic psychology classes? Mentally ill people do not act out all the time. Human behavior is not consistent or predictable. What motivates one person will have no effect on another. And one of my favorites. It is easier to stop a behavior than to force a behavior. It very hard to force change on someone who resists change.