San Francisco's drug problem has gotten bad enough that state and federal authorities are joining the fight.

A joint public safety operation was launched early last month in the city.

Since then, the California Highway Patrol has seized enough fentanyl to kill the entire population of San Francisco nearly three times over, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said.

And California Rep. Nancy Pelosi announced last week that the Department of Justice approved a designation for San Francisco that will unlock new federal resources to help combat the city’s fentanyl epidemic.

“Two deaths per day, that’s basically how many people that we lose right now in this city to overdoses,” San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said during a recent police commission meeting.

Scott was discussing the interagency plans for disrupting open-air drug markets that have taken root in the city.

The Tenderloin neighborhood is the epicenter of the activity, but the problems have spilled out of what was once seen as the containment zone.

Scott said residents, business owners, workers and visitors have expressed concerns over the degradation of the city.

“It’s not just the people who are in this condition that suffer from this,” the police chief said of drug users. “It’s all of us.”

Tom Wolf, a recovery advocate and San Francisco native, said there are 3,000 children living in the Tenderloin neighborhood who have to be escorted to and from school by a group of parent volunteers to ensure their safety, because they have to walk through open drug scenes.

“Think about what kind of harms come to the community when you are a mother with a child in a stroller, and you can't walk down the street because there are tent encampments on the sidewalk, and people shooting drugs openly in front of you, and people selling drugs openly in front of you,” he said.

Wolf has lived the life of a homeless addict and emerged from the other side to push for change.

He’s now director of West Coast initiatives for the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions.

“Five years ago right now, I was actually homeless on the streets of San Francisco, struggling with heroin and fentanyl addiction,” he said.

He fell into addiction after foot surgery when he was given opioid pain killers. He spiraled into heroin use, bought pills off the street, and sent his family to bankruptcy, he said.

“Finally, my wife had enough and gave me an ultimatum of either to go to treatment or leave the home, and I opted to leave the home,” he said. “And I spent the next six months homeless on the streets of San Francisco.”

But he got intervention, and he said it’s “remarkable” he’s alive today.

San Francisco, a place he’s called home for decades, has become a regional magnet for people that are seeking drugs, he said.

San Francisco has a reputation of being more tolerant of certain activities, open drug use being one of them.

And the city’s loose drug policies “are creating tremendous harm to the community,” he said.

“I've just seen it get progressively worse over the last five years to now, that we're really at kind of an inflection point in San Francisco,” Wolf said.

Police have ramped up their patrols of the problem areas in recent weeks.

The police chief said they’ve arrested dozens of people during this crackdown.

And only three of the people arrested were actually from San Francisco, he said.

Scott said he only has anecdotal insight as to why the city has attracted drug users and sellers.

"I’ve gotten answers like, ‘Drugs are cheap and plenty available, and you’ve got an environment where it’s permitted,’” the chief said.

Wolf said you can purchase fentanyl on the street right now for as little as $5.

And drug users will do what they need to do in order to pay for their addiction, spurring more crime such as shoplifting and break-ins.

The police chief said drugs are the top concern in the city, above shootings, robberies or anything else.

He said they’re committed to cracking down on these open-air drug markets and taking drugs off the streets, especially fentanyl.

Fentanyl, a man-made opioid, is 50 times more potent than heroin and can be deadly in very small amounts.

Authorities say other street drugs and fake prescription pills get laced with fentanyl, often without the user realizing it, because fentanyl produces a cheap high.

Scott said nearly 270 people have died of overdose in the city this year through April, and nearly 80% of those deaths were fentanyl related.

“This is not anything new, for anybody who has been paying attention,” the police chief said. “So, we have to do something different than what we’ve been doing.”

Interagency collaboration will be key to gaining traction, Scott said.

In addition to the 4.2 kilos of fentanyl that’s been seized, the CHP has seized 957 grams of methamphetamine, 319 grams of cocaine and 31 grams of heroin during the operation, the governor’s office reported last week.

Enforcement has been lacking and inconsistent in the past, the police chief said during the commission meeting.

Wolf, the former addict, shared a personal story to illustrate just how lacking enforcement has been.

“I was standing there smoking crack one day, and I took a big hit off of my crack pipe, and I heard someone come up behind me, and I turned around, and it was a cop,” he said, recounting a 2018 incident. “And I just inhaled the hit of my crackpot, and I panicked. And I exhaled and blew all the crack smoke in his face. And you know, you would think then, you know, I'm going to jail.

“Nope,” he said. “He just made me drop my pipe and walk away.”

Wolf said he’s “cautiously optimistic” this new enforcement effort will do some good, but he’s skeptical there’s enough local willpower needed to truly turn the tide.

It took years to dig this hole, and it will take a lot of time to rebuild the deterrent that had been systematically removed, he said.

Drug issues, of course, aren’t exclusive to San Francisco.

“The whole state of Oregon decriminalized drug possession, and you kind of see the results,” Wolf said. “In Oregon, there was a 98% increase since they passed Measure 110, which decriminalized drug possession. There's been a 98% increase in overdose deaths during that time.”

Drugs and crime have also ravaged Portland, according to folks in that city.

One Portlander, who had her home broken into in the middle of the day, told KOMO News in Seattle that it’s gotten so bad there that, “There are two types of people in Portland, someone who's had something happen to them and someone who will have something happen to them. There is no in-between.”

Back in San Francisco, Wolf said the most effective way to tackle the drug problem is a mix of law enforcement and public health efforts.

“A great example of that is Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where they actually, when they do outreach to the street, they actually have a psychiatrist that comes out with caseworkers and the police together to address open drug scenes together, and then they have ample resources behind that,” he said.

Scott, the police chief, said arresting people for drug crimes is a necessary and basic function in addressing the problem. But he, too, said that shouldn’t be the lone approach.

He said it doesn’t matter if they make 10 times the number of arrests unless drug activity is also declining.

Every person who goes to jail is offered public health services, the chief said.

Wolf said it shouldn’t be surprising that many drug addicts won’t willingly accept treatment.

But he said there's a subset of people on the street that require intervention.

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He said he had to get arrested six times before he was finally held accountable and ultimately got on the road to recovery thanks in part to a treatment bed at The Salvation Army.

“I'll be the first to tell you that there's no recovery in jail, but it did give me an opportunity to think and to kind of gather my thoughts and make a decision to actually give recovery an honest try,” he said.

But just as lacking as police enforcement has been, so too have the treatment efforts, Wolf said.

He said there are about 25,000 drug users in San Francisco, and there are only 500 drug treatment beds and 58 detox beds in the city.

“San Francisco is kind of what we call a treatment desert,” he said.