San Francisco eyes new strategy to put an end to drug markets: Here's what we know

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco has thrown just about everything to try to put an end to the drug markets with little or no success.

But now, some city officials say they have one more plan never before tried here. It has been successful in other cities.

It's not a mistake to refer to the proliferation of fentanyl in some San Francisco neighborhoods as an epidemic.

It's a noun, meaning "an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time."

"It's not good. I mean, I see it everyday, people be looking like zombies and doing all that. I use meth, methamphetamine, alcohol, but I'm not addicted to it," said Willie "Ace" Henry Smith, a drug user who says he stays away from fentanyl.

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Sure, they seize kilos and arrest drug dealers and the occasional user, and yet the Tenderloin remains San Francisco's public drug market.

Why is that? Would it surprise you to know that many have told us that San Francisco has never had a drug market intervention strategy? What do we mean by that?

"You have to first focus on the sellers. You have to close down the drug market. How do you close a market? You stop the people who are selling. If there are no sellers, there can't be buyers," said Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic.

Among the consequences of not having an intervention strategy are the unintentional drug overdose deaths.

Despite Mayor Daniel Lurie's efforts to combat the drug use here, it appears the number of overdose deaths in 2025, 588 people, will be about the same as the ones in 2024, which was 635 individuals. Keep in mind that we are still waiting for the December 2025 number to be released.

MORE: Disruption to the fentanyl supply chain is working as purity levels take drastic drop, DEA says

What was different in 2025 was the increase of synthetic drugs on the streets.

"They're cutting the fentanyl with benzodiazepine, which are very cheap to get, synthetic, and they are very strong, highly effective. It gives the appearance of enhancement of the actual drug itself while using less fentanyl and thereby saving the dealer of the distributor more fentanyl, so that they can sell more and actually making more money -- but cutting it with benzodiazepine," said Tom Wolf, a recovering drug user.

And here is the addendum to that.

"Narcan does not work to reduce an overdose from benzodiazepines. Addiction to benzodiazepines are very, very real and the withdrawals from them are far worse and far more dangerous than they are for opioids," Wolf said.

We spoke with Bilal Mahmood, the San Francisco supervisor representing the Tenderloin who made finding an intervention strategy part of his campaign.

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"The research has shown that a drug market intervention strategy is the only solution from a prevention-based approach to shut down open-air drug markets in the U.S.," Mahmood said.

There is one name circulating at City Hall as the utmost authority in closing down drug markets across the country: David Kennedy, of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Kennedy decided to hold off on talking to us, but the nonprofit funding his efforts, the Crankstart Foundation, did.

In a statement to ABC7 news, the nonprofit wrote: "Crankstart granted $500,000 to the Breaking the Cycle Fund at the San Francisco Foundation with the purpose of supporting research by John Jay College into interventions that will enhance public safety and health in San Francisco."

"I would say that $500,000 for a two-year engagement from somebody like David Kennedy is worth every penny," said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey who has tried to bring Kennedy here before.

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"It's a brilliant idea. They say to people, 'Look, we have all this evidence to put you in jail for a number of years, or you can leave the city. Which do you prefer?' Guess what they usually choose? Leave the city, and that has been successful everywhere, but we haven't done that here," Shaw said.

"So this would be calling upon the premier expert on shutting down open air markets to figure out a strategy on how to shut down a fentanyl market for the first time in U.S. history," Mahmood said.

In a city that has long been divided on the issue of how to come up with an intervention strategy, it appears that, for the first time, there is consensus among city leaders.

"Nothing that we are doing as a city to enable or tolerate public drug use is helping anybody. Not our neighborhoods, not our businesses, not our economy. But least of all, not anybody on the streets at the end of the rope addicted to a drug like fentanyl," Dorsey said.