DRUGS: Despite San Francisco’s efforts to curb the rising amounts of drug use, rehabilitating the dealers of said drugs has often proven to be a hard task. Many of the dealers—coming from poor, low-income villages in El Salvador—sell drugs to survive, due to a lack of documents and an inability to find better paying employment at more honorable jobs. Their supplies come from Mexican cartels, who exploit their labor with promises of safe passage up North in exchange for the selling of illegal goods. Fentanyl, an opioid drug known for its potent chemical capabilities, leads the crowd in terms of both popularity and deadliness. In 2020, fentanly was found to be the leading cause of about one-third of all drug overdose related deaths within San Francisco. In neighborhoods such as the Tenderloin, the sale of drugs is often done in full view of the law enforcement, who typically turn a blind eye to the proceedings due to unstated policies that promote the idea of “keeping things contained.”
If this part of the city is allowed to indulge in society's ills, the policy states, then it won’t spread to the other wealthier, more affluent neighborhoods. Millions of dollars have been poured into rehabilitation and crackdown efforts to address the city's problems, yet these efforts have proven unsuccessful, due to the larger systemic issues the war on drugs hides.