It’s final name for San Francisco’s authorities hooch.
A COVID-era program that guzzled $5 million of taxpayer cash yearly to serve booze to homeless alcoholics will lastly shutter this 12 months, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie completely advised The California Publish.
“For years, San Francisco was spending $5 million a 12 months to supply alcohol to individuals who had been battling homelessness and dependancy — it doesn’t make sense, and we’re ending it,” Lurie mentioned.
The taxpayer tipple, referred to as the Managed Alcohol Program (MAP), was created by the San Francisco Division of Public Well being in April 2020, when the town started housing homeless folks in resorts throughout lockdown.
This system served simply 55 shoppers throughout its run — amounting to a $454,000 bar tab every.
To forestall continual alcoholics from harmful withdrawal whereas shops and bars had been closed, clinicians introduced metered doses of beer and liquor to shoppers.
However the scheme went on for six years, properly after the pandemic ended.
Now, “We’ve got ended each metropolis contract for that program,” Lurie added.
A consultant for Group Ahead, the San Francisco-based nonprofit contracted by the well being division to run the plan since 2023, confirmed to The Publish that the town had pulled the plug.
A well being division official boasted in a 2024 video presentation about one of many success tales, who went from 36 ER visits yearly to fewer than 10.
Group Ahead’s monetary statements present the nonprofit acquired $17.8 million in authorities contracts and grants in 2025, with $10.8 million going to salaries and compensation. In 2024, it was revealed that CEO Kara Zordel, who stepped down that 12 months, earned a $225,794 wage.
Though Canada has over 50 MAP websites, San Francisco’s was the primary of its type within the US.
Whereas different hurt discount providers, like free needle exchanges, have been offered as public well being initiatives to struggle the unfold of bloodborne ailments, San Francisco’s MAP took the unprecedented leap of administering the precise substance of option to addicts.
Lurie, who was sworn in final 12 months, has put an finish to this, together with handing out free drug provides resembling crack pipes — a apply that had turned the town’s downtown, particularly its Tenderloin district, right into a taking pictures gallery.
“Underneath my administration, we made San Francisco a recovery-first metropolis and ended the apply of handing out fentanyl smoking provides so folks couldn’t kill themselves on our streets,” Lurie advised The Publish.
“We’ve got work to do, however we now have reworked the town’s response, and we’re breaking the cycles of dependancy, homelessness and authorities failure which have let down San Franciscans for too lengthy.”
Lurie put the town’s infamous open-air drug markets on discover in an announcement final 12 months, saying: “In the event you do medication on our streets, you can be arrested. And as a substitute of sending you again out in disaster, we provides you with an opportunity to stabilize and enter restoration.”
This shift away from a multi-decade, permissive strategy to dependancy places San Francisco exterior the norm for a significant West Coast metropolis, as the town governments of Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle proceed to insist {that a} housing scarcity, and never dependancy, is responsible for the homeless disaster.
Restoration advocates cheered the information of MAP’s impending closure.
“They [were] losing our cash simply paying folks to maintain utilizing the drug that they’re hopelessly hooked on,” Tom Wolf, a former homeless heroin addict in San Francisco who now works as a restoration advocate, advised The Publish.
“Hurt discount itself is a part of the general social justice framework … In the event you ascribe to social justice ideology, you need to ascribe to hurt discount, which has been redefined from the unique which means, from holding folks alive, and holding them from getting bloodborne ailments like HIV, to now supporting drug customers,” Wolf added.
“Over the previous twenty years the town had actually doubled down on housing first and hurt discount,” mentioned Steve Adami, a once-incarcerated recovering addict who’s now the manager director of The Approach Out, the Salvation Military’s recovery-focused homeless initiative in San Francisco.
“Underneath Mayor Lurie, they’ve reassessed the outcomes of these fashions and have pivoted and have a really clear technique: That we’re a recovery-first metropolis. He’s made a big funding into abstinence-based and recovery-focused providers.”
In Might, Lurie signed the largely symbolic Restoration First Act, which supplied a “north star” to reorient all metropolis packages towards restoration and abstinence over pure hurt discount in addressing the dependancy and homelessness disaster.
Amongst Lurie’s challenges: Town reportedly solely has 68 detox beds accessible for the 19,000 individuals who cycle out and in of homelessness yearly. On any given evening, 8,000 folks sleep on the streets of San Francisco. Those that search assist with dependancy usually wait days or perhaps weeks for detox providers to be accessible.
The MAP information highlights the uphill wrestle that Lurie faces in returning San Francisco to its as soon as grand self after being introduced down by homelessness, dependancy and retail flight within the downtown space.
However in contrast to Minneapolis’s Mayor Jacob Frey or Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Lurie has labored with President Trump on managing immigration enforcement in his metropolis.
