Programs that help drug consumers wait for fate during the Trump era

Samson Tafolo’s final count was 119.

For 45 minutes, he had pulled a wagon filled with mini-water bottles, hemp cigarettes and various hygiene products around Skid Row, distribute supplies and keep a count of all those he served on his usual road.

Tafolo and other managers of the sidewalk project, a reduction in non -profit misdeeds, the headquarters of which are a few blocks of houses, going around several times a week. The counting, he said, has become a part with high issues of work, because the figures are reported in subsidy requests.

With the changing political climate, their funding is suddenly in danger.

The sidewalk project is one of the many groups that provide resources for homeless people, including certain supplies specifically intended for drug consumers, such as sterile syringes. Although the defenders credited to save lives during the opioid epidemic, the programs remain controversial, the criticisms arguing that they were supplying dependence.

Managers of similar organizations across the State fear that the recent promises of the Trump administration to reduce federal spending and reduce redundancy of government agencies will have large -scale ramifications for their work.

“It’s just a fear,” said Tafolo about the uncertain future under Trump. “It keeps us on our guard.”

Federal health officials said on Friday that reductions in HIV prevention efforts, a key component of numerous harm reduction programs, are already in motion.

“It is definitely a different level of threat from normal,” said Elly Jalayer, director of misdeed reduction at Bienestar Human Services, which offers HIV tests and treatments as well as the exchange of syringes.

Jalayer said that the Los Angeles County Ministry of Health had spoken of its continuous support for the harm reduction programs, but that federal funding flows are more precarious.

In San Francisco, mayor Daniel Lurie is committed to restructuring the city’s homelessness services and taking a critical look at the efficiency of non -profit organizations funded by the city, including those that offer supplies to drug users.

“The days of the simple distribution of things, and no responsibility – it’s over,” said Lurie at a press conference.

Last year, the sidewalk project was sent for a subsidy due to questions about its syringe service program, said Soma Snakeoil, co -founder and executive director of non -profit organization. In 2023, the program administered more than 267,000 sterile syringes and collected more than 53,000 syringes in the areas of Skid Row and MacArthur Park, according to an impact analysis of a third -party research company.

“When you play constantly in a way that shows that you can imagine that you would be reimbursed,” said Snakeoil. “But they said they were moving in a different direction.”

This change tends to further emphasize treatment on treatment and less on reducing harm, said Snakeoil. She and others have warned that the reduction of syringe programs could have serious consequences on public health.

Federal officials told Wall Street Journal earlier this month that the Ministry of Health and Social Services was planning to move the HIV prevention division of the Center for Disease Control under another agency – or to completely eliminate the division.

Either the move would withdraw decades of progress and would be “devastating for our efforts to put an end to the HIV epidemic,” said Timothy Zembek, head of the harm reduction program at Being Alive La, a non -profit organization of HIV services.

Local officials are preparing to reduce the reductions in research and prevention efforts in the event of CDC participation.

Cheryl Barrit, executive director of the County Committee on HIV, said her colleagues commissioners – 33% of whom live with HIV – are nervous.

“There is a deep feeling of anxiety and worrying about what the current situation in the near future reserve for their lives,” said Barrit.

Programs have been shown to offer syringes specific to intravenous drug consumers prevent the spread of hepatitis and other blood -transferable pathogens. But Barrit said that it seems that decisions at the federal level are now taken “with what seems to be a lack of analysis and a lack of community contribution and a lack of partnership with the stakeholders who are experts in the field”.

The Ministry of Health and Social Services did not respond to requests of the time.

The feeling of disconnection between what government leaders believe to improve the results of public health and what local communities really need, this is what landed Snake Ooil and its co -founder of the Stacey Dee sidewalk project in their workline.

The group was initially founded as an art and music program, said Snakeoil. This did not transform into a misdeed reduction organization, she continued, once she and Dee carried out: “We were the right people to do this work because of our lived experience with the consumption of drugs”.

This lived experience is also shared by a large part of Sidewalk staff.

One of the main strokes on reducing misdeeds is that it allows and encourages the consumption of illicit drugs. But some sidewall members who have changed their lives said they would have liked access to services like their own when they were on the street.

Crushow Herring, who runs the Sidewalk community ambassadors’ program, sold drugs and lived on Skid Row. He ceased to treat in 2006 at the birth of his son and has since painted a mural at his old place of sale.

When Herring toured the neighborhood with his team on Wednesday at the end of March, he stopped at each pâté of houses to greet the old friends passing.

“We are like headlights,” he said. “When you walk on the water, you need a lighthouse.”

While Herring has distributed supplies, he directed new beneficiaries of the site without an appointment of Tradewalk on Stanford Avenue – a renovated garage where members of the incorporated community can eat, rest and buy a free stock of the reverse naloxone of overdose, clean syringes and food containers and other first -rate containers and hygiene supplies.

There, the regularity of the Michelle Ortiz sidewalk was responsible for juice, oatmeal and underwear.

Ortiz, who is HIV positive, lives on Skid Row for more than a decade, she said. At that time, she was assaulted and even gave birth in the street.

Last year, the sidewalk helped Ortiz to settle in the Weingu residential tower, she said. She still uses drugs on occasion – “I’m not going to lie to you” – but less than before, and she is now taking medication for HIV.

Without sidewalk, Ortiz said, “I wouldn’t be there – it would have been different.”

Despite the testimony of people like Ortiz, the tide seems to move against the reduction of misdeeds. Last year, the transition from the Prop 36 voting initiative adopted more severe sanctions for certain drug offenses, and now the Trump administration is ready to adopt radical changes.

Snakeoil noted that almost “every aspect of our work on the list of prohibited terms”, citing the hundreds of terms that the Trump administration would have asked federal employees to avoid.

Some non -profit organizations rush to change their organizational language to guarantee federal funding, said Snakeoil, while others flee to the private sector.

For Snakeoil, “it is difficult to see the way for sustainability” – especially when Trump and California officials feed the public interest in difficult crime tactics.

“Many people have already lost patience,” said Sebastian Perez, specialist in state business at Apla Health & Wellness, a non -profit organization focused on overdose prevention and diseases such as HIV.

As indicated by the death of Prop 36, Perez said: “I think the public is more willing to be punitive at the moment.”

But researchers in drug policy have long been difficult to note for drug consumers is not an approach based on evidence.

Peter Davidson, a professor at UC San Diego who studied the effectiveness of the so-called overdose prevention sites, where drugs are used under the supervision of harm reduction and health professionals, the current system said people to fail.

“We give them judicial lockers, so it is difficult for them to have legitimate jobs and to be part of the legitimate economy, and with all the instability that comes with this, we make them difficult to obtain accommodation,” said Davidson. “Then we expect them to succeed with success by using drugs.”

Meanwhile, research indicates that those who use syringe exchange programs are more likely to take treatment, he said.

And those on Skid Row continue to worry that they will lose part of the only one they see being done in their neighborhood.

“I am afraid that Trump would close everything,” said Alvaro Rodriguez, an Alvaro Rodriguez resident.

As he walked away, Rodriguez tightened a pair of worn composition books – in them, the business predicts to get out himself and his neighbors from the street.