San Francisco Poised to Start Drug-Testing Welfare Recipients

SAN FRANCISCO—Voters in this famously progressive city appear poised to pass a pair of law-and-order ballot measures Tuesday that would represent a turn to the political center amid mounting frustration with public drug use, homelessness and property crime.

Proposition F would mandate drug screening for recipients of public benefits, while Proposition E would expand police surveillance tools and reduce oversight of the force.

A recent poll conducted by San Francisco’s Chamber of Commerce found 61% of likely voters support the two ballot measures and 72% believe San Francisco is on the wrong track. The business group supports Proposition E and hasn’t taken a position on F.

“The pendulum is swinging,” said Malcolm Weitz, a 41-year-old San Francisco native who plans to vote “yes” on both. “It’s coming hard-core back to the center.”

Weitz, who runs a cannabis store, said he voted for former district attorney Chesa Boudin, the face of the progressive prosecutor movement, in 2019 but then voted to remove him in a successful recall in 2022. Boudin’s ouster, as well as the recall that same year of three school board members whom critics accused of giving priority to social-justice issues over postpandemic campus reopenings, were the first signs San Francisco voters were starting to fall out of love with the left.

Up and down the West Coast, Democratic leaders are trying to curtail an explosion of public drug use and overdoses by reining in permissive policies. In Oregon, state lawmakers are pushing to reverse the decriminalization of hard drugs that voters passed in 2020. In Seattle, the City Council passed a law to prosecute public drug use.

San Francisco set a grim record with 806 overdose deaths last year, caused largely by fentanyl. Business owners say they are fed up with property crimes such as shoplifting and break-ins that are more common here than in most other cities, though rates have been falling since the early days of the pandemic.

Crime has been cited as part of the reason for an exodus of stores from downtown San Francisco, including Nordstrom and Banana Republic last year. Macy’s said this week it would sell or close its downtown San Francisco store, an anchor in the struggling Union Square shopping district.

Much of the ire in San Francisco has been aimed at Democratic Mayor London Breed, who faces a difficult re-election campaign this year with several challengers from her party running on her right. She is supporting both propositions.

“People keep trying to make this about being liberal or conservative, but it’s really about being compassionate, with some tough love in the process,” Breed said in an interview.

Testing public-benefit recipients for drugs has long been a policy pushed by Republicans and is the law in more than a dozen states, including Alabama, Arizona and Missouri.

Campaigns supporting Propositions E and F have raised $2.5 million, funded in part by technology executives who have recently become more active in San Francisco politics. Opponents, who’ve raised $234,000, say neither measure will solve the problems voters are concerned about.

“They’re all about performative mayoral re-election politics,” said Aaron Peskin, a San Francisco supervisor and longtime leader of the city’s progressive wing.

Breed said her support for the propositions isn’t related to her re-election campaign.

“I will not do this job in fear of losing it,” she said.

Proposition F has gotten the lion’s share of attention in the city. It would require drug screening for people receiving public benefits and require drug users to participate in treatment programs to continue receiving those benefits.

“The measure politically reflects enormous frustration with the lack of progress in reducing drug problems in San Francisco,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University professor who studies drug policy. “This is something you normally associate with more conservative parts of the country.”

Proponents say that the measure will prevent “drug tourism”—out-of-towners traveling to San Francisco to use drugs and receive public benefits—and enable social workers to get more people into treatment.

Humphreys said in other places that have tried similar policies, the sheer numbers have made it difficult to get most addicted people into treatment. He also said such rules can unfairly punish those who relapse while trying to get sober.

“I think it’s going to pass and I think it’s going to be a mess,” he said

Proposition E would loosen restrictions on car chases, allowing police to pursue those suspected of any felony or violent misdemeanors, instead of limiting the criteria to violent felonies. It would also ease reporting requirements in use-of-force cases and end a requirement that the Board of Supervisors approve the purchase of technology such as drones.

Peskin said the measure is unnecessary because the board has never denied a request for surveillance technology from the Police Department.

Breed and other supporters say it will give police more tools to arrest drug dealers and thieves who break into cars, a persistent problem in the city.

The status quo is resulting in “inaction, frustration and a feeling among rank-and-file police officers that they can’t do the job they were sworn to do,” said Sharky Laguana, the chief executive of van-rental company Bandago, who has spent years working with public officials to combat vehicle break-ins.

Write to Zusha Elinson at [email protected] and Jim Carlton at [email protected]