Listen to this San Francisco spending 5 million taxpayer dollars
to help homeless Alcoholics with a pilot program that includes
providing them with free beer and vodka.
Yes, this is happening. The program supplies them with one
to four drinks per day,
as well as life skills classes,
hotel housing, three meals a day,
and cultural outings like San Francisco Giants games.
Tom Wolf is a homeless recovery advocate and the founder
of the Pacific Alliance for Prevention and Recovery.
Tom joins me now. Tom,
as a recovering addict yourself,
is this a good idea?
No, it's not a good idea and not When would
you consider the fact that over the last four years
San Francisco spent $20 million
to basically service a total of a couple of 100
people during that four year period by giving them free
vodka and beer.
You know, for that amount of money we could have
funded 60 drug treatment beds instead.
So you really have to ask,
where is the recovery in all of this and what
is the desired outcome
of this program? They say it'll save money,
but you know, we just spent 20 million bucks over
the last four years.
So you have to really ask,
is it is it saving money and is it making
a difference?
Yeah. They say their goal is to keep people out
of the ER and reduce calls to cops.
Do you think, given homeless Alcoholics,
free booze will accomplish that goal?
Well, you know, what also accomplishes that goal is actually
drug treatment.
So no, You know, it may reduce those calls and
and thereby save money.
But again, we're spending $5,000,000 a year to give people
free alcohol,
which is it's kind of like if,
you know, I'm a recovering heroin addict that used to
live on the street,
if you just, you know,
we're spending $5,000,000 to give me less heroin than what
I was already taking,
Guess what, I'd still be on the street today or
I'd be dead from using.
So I don't really see what the benefit is of
all of this
and I'm glad it was exposed.
Do you get the sense that the system almost wants
to keep people sick for some reason,
for some sick reason?
You know, I I would like to think that that's
not the case.
But in this situation, yeah,
I mean, we, you know,
the Department of Public Health's job is to keep people
healthy,
not to keep people sick.
So this program runs exactly
opposite of what the actual stated goal is of our
public health Health Department in which you know has a
a budget itself of over $3 billion a year in
San Francisco to keep people healthy and to keep our
city healthy.
And so you, again, you have to ask,
is giving free alcohol to people that are chronic Alcoholics
actually
keeping them healthy or keeping them sick?
And the answer is the latter.
They're still sick because they're still out there on the
street.
Apologies, Tom, I think it's so important every time we
have you on because you are the expert here.
And to me, every time I hear you speak,
it seems like the progressive left has no real solutions
other than to feed
the homeless industrial complex and never help the people that
need the help.
It's so important that you come on our program and
let people know about that.
Tom Wolf, thank you for what you do.
Appreciate it.