San Francisco, for those who don't know, is a union town. And now the city has one more group hoping to push for its interests via strength in numbers: Drug users.
A San Francisco Drug-Users Union, operated by the Harm Reduction Therapy Center is now on the scene, bankrolled by a one-year grant: a $35,000 shot in the arm from the Drug Policy Alliance.
SF Weekly was unable to reach the union's sole paid employee, Alexandra Goldman. But it did reach her union's benefactor, Laura Thomas, the San Francisco-based deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Thomas stressed that she's not setting the agenda for the San Francisco
Drug-Users Union. But she did note that drug-user unions in Vancouver
and New York City have "essentially served the same purpose as the
Coalition on Homelessness does. It's an organization of a set of folks
who don't have a say in policies that have a direct impact on them. The
intent is to organize drug-users and help them have a voice and a say
in local politics."
(An aside: This wouldn't have been my observation on how city government is flawed or what our local political scene is missing. But to each his own.).
Thomas continued that it's up to the union to decide what kind of drugs are included in its members' resumes, but other drug-users unions tend to cater to users of illegal drugs (not, say, medical patients using prescription drugs or those unable to afford legal drugs.). Drug-users unions elsewhere have pushed for supervised injection facilities and access to medical treatment.
When asked if the union would push for users of illegal drugs to be able to continue doing so with impunity or for those struggling with addiction issues to be treated medically and not criminally, Thomas answered "probably all of the above."
"There's not a lot of newspaper articles about people in the Upper Haight or Tenderloin being stigmatized, homeless drug-users, you know," said Thomas. "Local media likes to stigmatize and demonize people. Often, what's really going on is, they're poor."
H/T | Petrelis Files
