San Francisco is giving homeless alcoholics free beer and vodka under a taxpayer-funded pilot program as city leaders grapple with the homeless crisis plaguing its streets.
The city’s Department of Public Health runs the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP), which administers alcohol to addicts, Fox News reported. report Saturday.
Officials hope the program will “take homeless people off the streets” and reduce incidents that require emergency services to intervene.
“While experts say the program can save or extend lives, critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and abstinence programs instead. ” Fox pointed out.
In 2020, the San Francisco Department of Health said authorities were giving people alcohol, tobacco, medical marijuana and other substances to prevent them from going out to obtain them themselves during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Breitbart News reported at the time.
According to an article on Fox, the California Healthcare Foundation announced that in 2020, nurses and other trained workers were running supervised alcohol programs in homeless shelters and transitional and permanent housing facilities.
The foundation said this is “one way to minimize harm to people with alcohol use disorders.”
“This model aims to prevent the potentially life-threatening effects of alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures and injury, by prescribing limited amounts of alcohol,” the foundation added.
The program was reportedly established and expanded during the pandemic. It currently operates in a former hotel in the Tenderloin District and has an annual budget of $5 million.
Adam Nathan, CEO of the AI company and chairman of the city’s Salvation Army, criticized the program online after visiting the site.
“The whole thing is very strange to me and doesn’t feel right. Giving drug addicts free drugs doesn’t solve their problems. It only stretches them. All of this “Where is the recovery?” he said.
December, NBC News report A record number of people are experiencing homelessness in the United States.
Many San Francisco locals are fed up with the homeless situation, with some residents having to learn the “poopy dance” to avoid contact with the nasties left on the city’s streets. Breitbart News reported in December.
