‘Where’s the Recovery in All This?’: SF Buying Beer, Vodka for Homeless Alcoholics with Taxpayer Money

Homeless alcoholics are getting free beer and vodka under a taxpayer-funded pilot program in San Francisco as city leadership grapples with the homelessness crisis plaguing its streets.

The city’s Department of Public Health runs the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP) to give doses of alcohol to the addicted, Fox News reported on Saturday.

Officials hope the program will “keep the homeless off the streets” and decrease incidents in which emergency services have to step in.

“Experts say the program can save or extend lives, but critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and sobriety programs instead,” Fox noted.

In 2020, the San Francisco Health Department confirmed that officials were giving alcohol, tobacco, medical cannabis, and other substances to people to keep them from going outside to get it themselves during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, Breitbart News reported at the time.

Per the Fox article, the California Health Care Foundation said in 2020 nurses and trained workers administered managed alcohol programs in homeless shelters and transitional and permanent homes.

The foundation said it is “one method to minimize harm for those with alcohol use disorder.”

“By prescribing limited quantities of alcohol, the model aims to prevent potentially life-threatening effects of alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures and injuries,” the foundation added.

The program was established during the pandemic and has reportedly expanded. Now, it operates inside a former hotel in the Tenderloin district and has a $5 million annual budget.

Adam Nathan, the CEO of an AI company and chair of the city’s Salvation Army, criticized the program online after visiting the site.

“The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn’t feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn’t solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where’s the recovery in all this?” he said.

In December, NBC News reported that a record number of people in the United States were experiencing homelessness:

Many locals in San Francisco are fed up with the homeless situation and some residents have had to learn the “poopie dance” to avoid coming into contact with something nasty left on the city’s streets, Breitbart News reported in December.