There are people who'll flag anything suggesting San Francisco has any kind of problem, but please read this. This is one of those increasingly rare, truly deep dives that utterly demystifies something that seems inaccessible to the outside world.

No cartel wars, no kingpins, just efficiently distributed systems and networks of trust. Clever bits of business work tucked into the broader systematic cruelties, like dealers using homeless people as holders to distribute and deflect risk. The logistics of feeding the dealers. Heroin dealers invoking moral codes to explain why they don't sell fentanyl. Little things that show how this giant bogeyman is so much more of the banal kind of evil as everything else, growing out of wreckage as much as it leaves in its wake.

Some of my favorite bits from this article are:

"The Chronicle interviewed numerous dealers who were deported but re-entered the country illegally and returned to the Tenderloin shortly thereafter. One has done it nine times."

“One said he moves furniture, another said he was an Amazon delivery driver in the morning and sold drugs in the evening.”

"The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”

"Asked recently whether he was afraid of San Francisco police, a dealer let out a loud laugh. Yes and no, he said.

“They know what’s going on, but I don’t know. If they want to clean it, they can clean it,” the dealer said. “Sometimes they do the job, but it’s like, just for the news, like, ‘Oh, we did the job good.’ If they wanted to clean it good, they could do that.”

The dealer said he likes some of San Francisco’s police officers. Sometimes, he said, one will tap him on the shoulder and say, “You’ve been out here for four hours. You’ve made enough money.”"

So the police seem to just let this happen without caring about its impact on the citizens that pay their salaries? Got it.

I see a lot of "why is it allowed to continue" comments, but it's not clear to me that more police intervention would change much.

You arrest one group of people, put them in jail - ok, now you have a market vacuum, what's going to happen?

You can push it a bit further underground, increase the prices a bit, but as long as the same old incentives are there you'll see the same outcomes.

You're only changing the faces on the street unless you can do something more fundamental.

Why is it allowed to continue?

Qui bono?