San Francisco ends $5M alcohol delivery program to alcoholics

WASHINGTON (TNND) — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie ended a $5 million a year Covid-era addiction harm reduction program which consisted of delivering alcohol to alcoholics.

In April 2020, San Francisco Department of Public Health created the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP). At a time when bars and stores were closed due to the pandemic, alcoholics would get their booze dropped off directly to them at the taxpayers’ dime. Proponents argue that by directly supplying the alcoholics with booze that it would prevent them from experiencing harsh withdrawal symptoms.

The program lasted long after the pandemic ended.

MAP serviced 55 clients and each of them averaged a $454,000 each, the California Post reported.

“For years, San Francisco was spending $5 million a year to provide alcohol to people who were struggling with homelessness and addiction — it doesn’t make sense, and we’re ending it,” Lurie told the outlet.

A spokesperson for Community Forward, the San Francisco nonprofit that has operated the program under a city contract since 2023, told the California Post that officials had terminated the contract.

Although San Francisco engages in other “harm reduction” measures such as giving out free needles and crack pipes to addicts; San Francisco is the first American city to participate in MAP — an initiative which gives the substance directly to the addicts.

Lurie, elected mayor in 2024, is breaking from other West Coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles by ditching the “harm reduction” approach to addressing addicts and insisting on making San Francisco a recovery-first city.

Back in May, Lurie signed the Recovery First Act, which seeks to recenter city programs and non-profits contracted by the city to strive for abstinence and recovery.

“Under my administration, we made San Francisco a recovery-first city and ended the practice of handing out fentanyl smoking supplies so people couldn’t kill themselves on our streets,” Lurie told the California Post.

“We have work to do, but we have transformed the city’s response, and we are breaking the cycles of addiction, homelessness and government failure that have let down San Franciscans for too long,” Lurie continued.