San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Tenderloin ‘Fentalife’ ads send confusing message
At first glance, the large sign pasted on the side of the Hartland Hotel on Geary and Larkin streets seemed like a public health notice.
“Don’t forget to add Narcan to the family shopping list,” it read, accompanied by an image of a vending machine stocked with the life-saving overdose reversal medication.
I carry Narcan everywhere. Having lost people I love to overdoses, being prepared to care for those in need feels like a basic human responsibility. So, I briefly held out hope that the ad was encouraging other people to do the same.
But something seemed off. “That’s Fentalife!” the sign said cheerily at the bottom, in a font that looked like it came off a Barbie box.
A QR code on the ad took me to a website with a pre-written email someone can send to elected officials, calling for an increase in police staffing and investment in substance use recovery programs.
“City Hall is forcing us to live an anti-lifestyle,” the site read. “We call it the Fentalife.”
As you’ve probably guessed by now, the ad wasn’t a public service announcement. It was part of a media campaign paid for by TogetherSF Action, a political action group formed with funding from venture capitalist Michael Moritz. This campaign wasn’t cheap; the group told The Chronicle it shelled out $300,000 for ads across the Tenderloin and South of Market.
“No yelling while selling drugs. Kids are trying to sleep around here,” read one. “The Fentalife is no life,” said another. Oddly, one had a picture of someone attempting to administer Narcan to a CPR dummy.
Kanishka Cheng, CEO of TogetherSF Action, told me the ads are meant to pressure the city to end public drug dealing — by ramping up police staffing and creating more treatment beds and resources.
When I asked Cheng why the group thinks more police will solve the drug crisis, she said she doesn’t think it can. At least not alone.
“We are asking for more presence from the DEA, to build a true coordinated effort from state and federal law enforcement. I don’t think that our police department has staffing capacity and perhaps even expertise to address it. Until there is a federal response coordinated at the state and local level, it’s probably going to continue to be more of the same.”
But there’s no mention of the Drug Enforcement Administration in the pre-written letter, only a call for more police. The reason?
“That’s the only thing the city budget can invest in on the law enforcement side,” Cheng said.
The second half of TogetherSF Action’s ask is to fund more substance use recovery beds, staff and resources. But how an increase in policing and recovery beds would go together is unclear. On the one hand, increasing policing to enforce the war on drugs has proven a failed tactic. A Pew Charitable Trust analysis of law enforcement and public health data found that imprisoning people for drug offenses doesn’t lead to a reduction in drug use. There is nothing new or revolutionary in trying something that’s failed. It’s also bad public health policy; people coming out of jail are 40 times more likely to overdose.
The reaction to the ads has not been positive from those in the Tenderloin neighborhoods who work with people who use drugs. The signs have been posted around the 6th Street Harm Reduction Center, for example, where people go for medical treatment, clean supplies and substance use treatment.
“It’s one of the most disgusting, offensive, tone-deaf responses I can imagine to the public health crisis we’re in right now,” Laura Thomas, director of harm reduction policy for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, told me. “We are running out of Narcan pretty much every week. The numbers of people coming in for services is skyrocketing. And the best response these people can do is
put up pastel ads in the neighborhood mocking people?”
When I asked Cheng about the satirical depiction of Narcan in the ads, she clarified that she’s not against Narcan.
“What we’re saying is that we’ve normalized this so much that it’s become part of our vernacular,” she said. “It’s something that we’re all told to be aware of, to learn how to use, to carry around. And that’s a Band-Aid on this bigger crisis.”
There’s nothing wrong with normalizing care. In fact, if one gives TogetherSF the benefit of the doubt that they want to save people’s lives, reducing stigma around treatment and recovery is crucial. Instead, their ads do the opposite. If the group wants to make a difference in the crises on our streets, its money could be far better spent.
I did some math. That $300,000 could buy the city 100,000 vials of generic, injectable naloxone or 12,631 doses of brand-name nasal Narcan.
It could pay for 927 days of residential substance use treatment.
It could go to the salaries of three social workers, who could help take the burden off our city’s overworked employees and help some of the most vulnerable people with addiction issues get into housing.
Or, if the group is really invested in an ad campaign, it could go straight after the powers that be who dictate policies without throwing the people who are victims of those broken systems under the bus.