San Francisco and its nonprofits can continue handing out pipes and foil to drug users in the heart of the city, a federal judge has ruled.
In a decision on March 30, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar upheld the city’s long-established practice of allowing nonprofit contractors to distribute drug paraphernalia in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
Tigar’s decision denied a request by Tenderloin residents and business owners seeking to end the policy. They argued it put them in danger, attracted drug users and dealers to the area and contributed to unsafe living conditions and increased crime.
Those claims, according to Tigar’s ruling, were unsupported by evidence.
“The City’s arguments are both unrebutted and persuasive,” Tigar wrote, noting that the plaintiffs, a group of residents and property owners that included the Phoenix Hotel who sued under the name “Jane Roe,” failed to respond meaningfully to key points raised by the city.
The court’s decision is another blow to a growing movement of drug addiction advocates, who have for years sought to end harm-reduction programs in San Francisco, arguing that they contribute to the intolerable and often miserable conditions drug users experience across the city.
A call to end the harm-reduction policies helped lead a recent takeover of City Hall by moderate city leaders who have advocated for pursuing abstinence-based drug programs, despite guidance from the city’s health department to the contrary.
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new zero-tolerance policy for public drug use has led to less drug use in the streets, residents say, and Tigar cited that improvement in his ruling.
The judge found that plaintiffs were no longer facing the kind of “certainly impending” injury required to justify emergency court intervention. Instead, Tigar said plaintiffs relied on “speculative fears” about future harm, which are insufficient under federal law.
Tigar also said plaintiffs failed to establish a link between the city’s harm reduction policies and the Tenderloin’s public drug use problem, nor did they show that stopping the distribution of drug paraphernalia necessarily reduced drug use, homelessness or crime.
“The record before the Court contains no evidence that enjoining the City from funding organizations that distribute drug paraphernalia would reduce the social ills that Plaintiffs complain about,” Tigar wrote.