Desperate to combat a drug epidemic that’s cost more than 1,300 lives in the past two years, San Francisco officials are pushing to get more people into treatment and spending millions on expanding existing programs and creating new ones.
Now, some city leaders and nonprofits are reviving talk of a get-tough method of rehab that has been largely rejected throughout the U.S. since the 1990s — placing a primary emphasis on requiring clients to shake their addictions without medication or relapses, loosely referred to as abstinence.
Currently, the city’s health department and its nonprofit partners embrace a “harm reduction” approach, letting people shed addictions mostly at their own pace with help from medication if requested and without intensive judgment from counselors if they relapse. At times that means going into residential rehab, but it also can simply be living inside away from the temptations of street dealers.
