San Francisco, CA
Here’s Why Some San Francisco Nonprofits Give Foil and Pipes to Drug Users | KQED
“Maybe you yesterday said, ‘I’m going to start recovery,’ and you didn’t because addiction is strong, addiction is a disease, it takes a lot to get to a place where you’re ready to get on that recovery spectrum,” Fromer said. “But we want to make sure when you’re ready, you have what you need.”
She told KQED that Glide’s decision to offer foil and other supplies “is really about saving lives and preventing disease, but also creating opportunities for recovery.”
Dr. Amer Raheemullah, the director of the Inpatient Addiction Medicine Service at Stanford Hospital, said such harm-reduction strategies not only make drug users safer but also can urge them to turn to treatment options when made available at the same location as other recovery services.
“The idea is to reduce harm, but then also have this interaction with somebody who’s actively using to slowly nudge them toward treatment,” he told KQED. “That can be through counseling, like a skilled counseling interview that’s been shown to be effective, but it can also simply be by co-locating treatment in the same place that they’re getting these needles or these other harm reduction tools.”
One way to think about harm reduction, Raheemullah said, is to consider those struggling with addiction as having a neurological deficit.
Take someone with Parkinson’s disease, for example — “They might have an increased risk of falls. So, in order to reduce harm, we pad their house; we may make adjustments in their living situation, not to encourage falls, but to reduce the damage of falls if or when they occur. It’s the same with substance use,” he said.
Sharing and reusing needles can increase the risk of contracting HIV and Hepatitis C, which can lead to illness and, in some cases, death.
“The higher objective is to just reduce this harm that’s occurring, preserve life and not do too much damage for later down the line when people eventually accept treatment,” Raheemullah said.
There is also no proof that administering needles or other safe injection supplies increases the use of illegal drugs, he told KQED.
A randomized study of 600 people who injected cocaine, morphine and/or amphetamines found “no difference in the number of injections over time” for people supplied with sterile needles compared to those taught how to purchase them, according to the 2003 report out of the University of Alaska Anchorage.
The Center for Disease Control also said in a February 2024 report that 30 years of research has shown programs that provide access to sterile injection equipment “do not increase illegal drug use.”
Fromer said that Glide’s distribution of safer drug-use materials is one of the nonprofit’s many programs geared toward helping drug users — whether they have chosen recovery or not.
A California sea lion pup found last week on a San Francisco street corner is malnourished but “active and quite feisty,” The Marine Mammal Center said Monday.
The sea lion, believed to be about 10 months old, had apparently wandered into city’s Outer Sunset neighborhood and was discovered early Thursday morning, authorities said.
The pup was spotted near 48th and Irving Streets, one block from Ocean Beach and Sunset Dunes park. A trained responder from the Marine Mammal Center was joined by San Francisco park rangers and police officers to safely corral the pup, now named ‘Irving’, into a carrier crate.
Dubbed ‘Irving’ by his rescuers, Irving weighed in at 40 pounds and is considered malnourished, the Marine Mammal Center said.
“The sea lion is active and quite feisty which is a positive initial sign in terms of general behavior,” the center said in a news release on Monday.
During an exam by veterinarians, a series of blood samples were also taken to determine whether there’s any underlying ailment.
Irving is being tube fed a fish smoothie blend two times per day to boost hydration and weight; offers of whole herring will also begin shortly.
The quick actions by police, recreation and parks staff and Ocean Avenue Animal Hospital gave the young sea lion a second chance at life, said Lauren Campbell, animal husbandry manager at The Marine Mammal Center.
“As a roughly 10-month-old pup in his first year of learning how to forage on his own, this animal has a long road to recovery due to his severe malnutrition,” Campbell said. “We are hopeful that in the coming weeks with continued specialized care that this pup starts to make positive strides toward recovery and release.”
Irving will be held in the Center’s Intensive Quarantine Unit until clearing medical protocols, before likely being transferred this week to a traditional rehabilitation pool pen. A long-term prognosis and potential release timeline are not currently known.
After Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Washington Nationals, the San Francisco Giants headed back to the West Coast. They’re going back to the Bay Area, too.
The Giants have a date with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series at Oracle Park starting Tuesday night.
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So, San Francisco probably wanted to get out of Washington, D.C., with a win. That didn’t happen at Nationals Park on Sunday afternoon.
Nationals reliever Andrew Alvarez, the third pitcher used by the team on Sunday, picked up the victory with 4 1/3 innings of work. Giants starter Robbie Ray absorbed the loss, falling to 2-3 this season.
Ray worked six innings, giving up seven hits, three runs (all earned), walking one, and striking out seven Nationals. If the Giants’ offense had found a way to tack on some runs, then Ray’s outing wouldn’t have looked so bad.
The Giants’ bats, though, had eight hits. The big number for Giants manager Tony Vitello to look at in the box score after this one was, well, pretty big. San Francisco left 10 runners on base on Sunday, going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. This indicates that San Francisco had plenty of opportunities to score some runs.
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They just didn’t get the job done.
Let’s go to the bottom of the fifth with the Giants and Nationals in a scoreless tie. With nobody out, the Nationals’ Keibert Ruiz connected for his third double this season. Nasim Nuñez scored to put Washington up 1-0.
With one out, Curtis Mead sent a Ray pitch over the left-field wall, a two-run blast that gave the Nationals a 3-0 lead.
San Francisco had a scoring threat in the top of the eighth inning. With runners at first and second base and nobody out, Casey Schmitt grounded into a double play. Matt Chapman, who was on second base, went to third. But the Giants were unable to bring him home.
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Rafael Devers and Drew Gilbert went 2-for-4 at the plate for the Giants, producing half of the Giants’ hits.
The Giants fall to 9-13 this season, sitting in fourth place in the National League West Division. The Nationals’ record goes to 10-12, good enough for third place in the National League East Division.
All eyes now turn toward Oracle on Tuesday night. It’ll be a chance for two longtime rivals to renew their rivalry.
Baseball fans know that the Giants-Dodgers matchups usually are must-see TV.
That’s probably going to be the case once again as Giants fans watch their team battle the Dodgers. Those lucky to have tickets to the three-game series at Oracle Park will show up in Giants colors, hoping to see Los Angeles head back to Southern California with either a series loss or a Giants’ sweep.
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Buckle up, Giants fans. It’s about to get rowdy at Oracle Park.
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The 4,140-sq-km bay is the largest estuary on the west coast of the US. Before 2018, this species of whales wasn’t known to stop seasonally or consistently in the bay, bypassing it on their migration route down to Baja California and back up the Arctic, said Josephine Slaathaug, who led a recent study on gray whale mortality in the bay.
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