Ever since Daniel Lurie was sworn in as Mayor of San Francisco on 8 January 2025, he has been determined to combat San Francisco's fentanyl crisis, which has precipitated over 5,000 fatal overdoses in the City since 2017.
In early February 2025, just four weeks after Lurie took his oath of office, his fentanyl state of emergency ordinance successfully cleared the Board of Supervisors, winning the vote by a ten-to-one landslide. Later that month, he spearheaded a crackdown on the drug and illegal vending trades along 6th Street. However, critics have complained that the realization of this policy has given this element and the players involved therein the opportunity to migrate to the Mission District.
By November, he announced plans to designate a vacant city-owned building at 444 6th Street as a Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage (RESET) Center to be overseen by the sheriff’s office and run by a city contractor. At this facility, people who have been arrested for public drug use and/or intoxication can sober up and be connected with treatment as an alternative to being put in a hospital or jail.
The exterior of the planned Rapid Enforcement, Support, Evaluation, and Triage (RESET) Center.
444 6th Street, San Francisco
In a statement given to the San Francisco Chronicle, Lurie vowed, “If you do drugs on our streets, we will arrest you. And with this new resource, we will give you a real chance to enter recovery.”
Though the RESET facility would enable an addict arrested on drug-related offenses to avoid being charged, Joe Kukura’s article on SFIst.com states that people trying to leave the facility before their mandatory time is up could be put in jail.
On 17 February 2026, Mayor Lurie signed off on legislation to remodel the building on 6th Street and have it open by springtime.
However, right around the time Mayor Lurie first announced plans for the RESET Center, former Supervisor Dean Preston posted on BlueSky, “Arresting people for their addiction is not a serious effort to solve addiction. It moves people out of sight temporarily and does more harm than good.” Preston went on to note how Lurie’s plans for the sobering center, which he called a “repackaged war on the poor,” parallel with President Trump's executive order to “End Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
Maggie Angst, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, characterized Lurie’s approach as “coercive” and noted that despite an increase in arrests for drug-related offenses such as loitering with intent to obtain narcotics or possession of drug paraphernalia, the drug users who end up detained are released within a few hours, continuing the revolving-door cycle.
Theoretically, inevitably, anybody addicted to a lethal substance could suddenly find themselves forced to choose between incarceration and rehabilitation. However, for some longtime drug users, the looming threat of jail time might not be easily internalized as a motivation to get treatment, any more than successful completion of a treatment program, court-ordered or otherwise, will guarantee a lifetime of sobriety.
One addict Maggie Angst spoke to for one of her Chronicle pieces cast doubt about how effective the increased police presence and subsequent arrests along 6th Street will be in terms of solving the City's fentanyl crisis, simply remarking, “People aren't going to stop using drugs.”
