cannabisnews.com: Record Number of San Francisco Homeless Died!





Record Number of San Francisco Homeless Died!
Posted by FoM on December 15, 1998 at 22:18:18 PT
This is so sad!
San Francisco  Heroin's popularity is growing among San Francisco's homeless -- and it's killing them. 
Of 86 drug-related deaths among the homeless last year, 40 were connected to heroin, according to a health department study released Tuesday. "Cocaine is a drug of celebration and heroin is a drug of desperation," said Evelyn James, spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco. "When people are on the street and they want to feel out of it ... heroin will do that for them." One-hundred-fifty-seven homeless people died in San Francisco between Dec. 1, 1997 and Nov. 30, 1998 -- the highest number since the city started keeping track in 1987. "The majority of people you see on the street have a substance abuse problem. That problem is what caused them to be homeless," said Earl Rynerson, a former member of San Francisco's Human Services Commission, which decides how to allocate public money. Increasingly pure heroin is readily available on the streets and can be had at a relatively low cost. A single dose, about a quarter gram, costs about $20. Critics say much of the $287 monthly assistance payments many homeless receive doesn't go toward food or housing. "The first and 15th are like pay days," Puccinelli said. "They get it and they don't use the money for living expenses ... the money goes into narcotics and alcohol." The 157 deaths far exceeded both the 104 recorded the previous year and the average of 118 deaths each year on city streets since 1987. Authorities estimate as many as 14,000 people live on San Francisco's streets. 
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Comment #1 posted by Sta on December 29, 2000 at 07:18:30 PT:
squatters and herion
I also used to be on the streets of SF and did my fair share of herion, but now I have straighted my life out. Some facts that were over looked: a one and one (a nick of tar heroin and a nick of cocaine) is only 10 dollars in the mission district.
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