Nearly 700 people died from drug overdoses in San Francisco in 2020. That’s more than the number of people who died from COVID-19 in San Francisco in the same year. Some people blame San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin for not being tough enough on the people selling drugs. In this installment of The Progressive Prosecutor, we look at the role of prosecutors in the opioid epidemic.
UPDATE: The D.A.'s office recently proposed $2.3 million for the creation of a fentanyl task force in its non-binding budget priorities for this fiscal year and next.
Sending everyone to prison for as long as possible hasn't worked. We've tried it, and I refuse to double down on the failures of the war on drugs.
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"The Progressive Prosecutor" is a series looking at San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin's first year in office. Find the rest of the stories in the series here.
The series was co-produced in collaboration with by Alice Woelfle, Christopher Egusa, and Sona Avakian. It was engineered by James Rowlands and Gabe Grabin, edited by David Boyer