Governor Newsom signed AB 2136, authored by Assemblymember Jones-Sawyer, removing legal barriers to establishing more drug checking programs in the state. The bill will also increase participation by providing much needed protections for those involved in these services.

“Three thousand deaths is an inconvenient truth. This highlights 3,000 failures and highlights how we are not listening to policy experts and doctors,” said Dr. Dan Ciccarone, who specializes in addiction medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, outside the medical examiner’s office near the Hunters Point neighborhood.

Amid what feels like an ever-worsening drug crisis here, locals and politicians alike are fed up. Overdose death rates remain near all-time highs. The Tenderloin, a historic downtown neighborhood, remains rife with open-air substance use and drug dealing. Public health officials are increasingly at a loss.

But the solution is not a return to the ‘war on drugs’…