Presumably to bolster his support for the proposed alcohol fee in San Francisco, Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius’ newest column, Chronic Drunks’ Treatment Costs S.F. Big Bucks, highlights the use of emergency and health services by the city’s chronic drunks. And it totals a lot of money and understandably frustrates the city’s service providers.
But here’s the thing. A five-year study of the problem revealed that there are only around 225 people — these “chronic inebriants” — that are high ambulance users, and “fewer than 300 individuals account for 80 percent of the ambulance runs for alcohol treatment.” There are around 809,000 people living in San Francisco, meaning less than 3/100th of a percent are chronic drunks abusing the city’s healthcare system, and that’s not including all the people who flock to the city in order to drink. I’d be frustrated, too, but since those fees are already borne in the taxes that every person pays (at the local, city, county, state and federal level) I don’t quite see how further taxing just those people that also drink alcohol is a reasonable remedy to this problem, as supporters of the AMFO (Nevius included) have argued.
The stories Nevius tells are tragic and detail real abuses, but never does he use the phrase “personal responsibility.” Clearly, these are people with problems. But alcohol didn’t cause their problems, something in their personality, life, etc. did. I grew up with a psychotic, alcoholic stepfather who abused my mother and me both emotionally and physically, but even as a child I knew the alcohol didn’t make him that way. There were deep-seated problems that caused his illness and alcohol was just one of the ways he tried to cope. He was responsible for his own behavior, it couldn’t be dismissed or blamed away because he got drunk.
By the statistics in Nevius’ own column, at least 99.97% of San Francisco residents are not abusing emergency services, but he and the other supporters of the new alcohol fee think that all drinkers should be punished for their own good behavior to pay for those who are irresponsible. What could make less sense than that?
Typical do-gooder crap. Build a silly case — then try to jam your values down everybody else’s throats.
First there was MADD — which tightened drunk driving laws to the point of being ridiculous by bludgeoning first time offenders who, OMG, blow a .08 for having one beer, one beer, with dinner then get caught in some checkpoint — while problem drinkers still jump behind the wheel and rack up multiple DUIs. Then the cigarette industry was attacked for billions because some people “didn’t know” smoking was bad for them. Now you’ve got people winding up and attacking everything from alcoholic beverages from a tax standpoint to fast food restaurants from a health standpoint. Now the organic food fart sniffers want everything to be free range and pesticide free — except they forget one thing — who isn’t going to get anything to eat because of it?
Tell you what. I was down in Tijuana having a business dinner with several guys from Japan. They thought it was amusing that American goes on and on and on all over the world about “freedom” — yet has a political system that allows a small group of people to manipulate the political process to the detriment of society as a whole.
I do IT work in a local brewery, and I think maybe the Taliban would endorse the Christian extremists in your society.
Are you boycotting free expression by not voicing my belief that Christian extremists and wonders of God and will arrive in heaven with 33 virgins?
I think you must be drunk if you don’t understand why extremism is the future of this planet.
Right on J & Mr Nuts! I read Nevius’ columns regularly in the Chron & generally agree w/him, but he missed the boat BIGTIME on this issue – we need Dave Barry’s input ASAP!