'I'm right in the middle of it'; JJ Smith documents Tenderloin's fentanyl crisis on Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO -- As city leaders grapple over how to address the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco, one man in the Tenderloin is trying to make a difference by becoming a citizen journalist.

The city's controversial "Linkage Center", where addicts could openly use drugs with supervision, recently closed, and while the political battles over the legality and effectiveness of so-called safe-injection sites rage on, the city's chief medical examiner released new data showing 52 people in San Francisco died of drug overdoses last month, 80% of those attributed to fentanyl.

JJ Smith takes videos of his daily conversations with people battling addiction on the streets of the Tenderloin. He documents daily overdoses on Twitter, not as a passerby seeking clicks, but an empathetic friend, desperately trying to help a lost soul.

"I care," said Smith. "If that were my child I would want someone to check in on my child." 

Smith's Twitter account is getting the attention of city leaders and even from members of the San Francisco Fire Department, who have thanked Smith on Twitter

"It's about helping you to recover and getting you off the streets to get some mental services that you need," said Smith.

His walk and talk are part of his daily routine. The 52-year-old father believes conditions are worsening, from homelessness to open-air drug trafficking and use near playgrounds.

"I want my kids and all the other kids here to be safe," said Smith. "I don't want them to come to this park and deal with people selling drugs or people here using drugs. I don't think that's okay."

At a town hall hosted by the non-profit Together SF, a network of citizens critical of supervised injection sites, Smith showed up for the first time to meet face-to-face with elected officials.

"People are dying out there. I'm right in the middle of it," said Smith. "I have my own brother Rodney, I have Joseph, I have Paul. Two of them died on the same day. Five of them died in the same week of fentanyl."

People just as frustrated about what's happening, know of what Smith is doing on the streets and online and listen to how drug dealers he says viciously attacked him

"This is what happened to me," said Smith showing his wounds. "But I still get up every day and do it."

Recovery advocate Thomas Wolf, once homeless and struggling with heroin and fentanyl addiction, is calling for abstinence and recovery-based strategies, along with a harm reduction approach.

He's critical of housing offered to addicts through city-funded single-room-occupancy hotels.

"We need to expand treatment and we need to have options for people," said Wolf. "We can't just have everybody going into SROs where hundreds of people are dying of drug overdose all the time. You need to have recovery-based therapeutic communities. There are organizations trying to bring that to San Francisco."

"I come to y'all for any kind of solutions that can help me in what I'm doing," said Smith.

For now, Smith keeps checking on struggling friends. He says harm reduction strategies and the current system are not working. The only solution he can find is convincing each person there's a better life through recovery, one step at a time.

Groups like HealthRIGHT360 and the Coalition on Homelessness are advocating for more supervised injection sites, saying the closure of the Linkage Center will lead to more deaths.

But city data shows fewer people (523) died of overdoses during the 11 months before the Center opened, compared to the first 11 months the Linkage Center was open (556) in 2022.

In:
• Fentanyl