Posted on 02/21/2024 4:36:51 PM PST by nickcarraway
A man holds money, and candy for sale in his hands.
There’s a drug that’s selling faster than fentanyl in San Francisco: sugar. Duffel bags full of sweet treats are selling out in minutes at the city’s open-air drug markets.
On any given night, people lay strewn across the Tenderloin neighborhood’s sidewalks next to empty ice cream cartons, discarded candy wrappers and drained bottles of soda.
Vendors flood United Nation Plaza’s open-air drug market every night with heaving bags full of candy and chocolate. Within minutes, they’ve sold out—having made a fistful of cash. Sugar fiends, desperate for their next high, roam the crowd bartering for gummy worms and Cap’n Crunch cereal.
“Soda, who’s got soda for sale?” one man frantically shouted on Thursday night.
Some vendors say they buy candy with food stamps and sell it for cash. Others admit they steal it, sometimes making an average of $40 to $50 in minutes.
A nearby convenience store worker, who declined to be named for fear of his safety, said candy is his bestselling product, even if it’s more expensive than the stuff sold on the street.
One vendor was seen Monday night lugging around a wheelbarrow full of individually wrapped pink and red homemade cakes for sale.
“Some of this shit might get you higher than dope,” said a man who identified himself as Jay Dog and was selling Kit Kats for a buck. “The dope is garbage.”
Dog claimed to be a member of the Marin County Crips gang. He refused to give his legal name but said he once served 15 years in prison for armed robbery.
Fentanyl in San Francisco, though drastically cheaper than in other cities, is sometimes only 5% pure, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Why is fentanyl drastically cheaper in San Francisco than in LA, NYC and Philly? But the sugar in candy bars is always potent.
A man named Chris, who declined to give his last name because he doesn’t want people to think he’s a candy thief, said he’s hooked on Kinder Bueno.
Chris was selling Sour Strips for $2 a pop on Thursday night. He complained that too many vendors sell candy for cheaper than he does, making it difficult for him to make any real money.
“They don’t value the risk they’re taking,” Chris said. “It isn’t fair.”
One man offered to trade a cable saw for a pack of Chris’s candy. Chris declined.
A woman later bartered with Chris to score a pack of strips for half price. He begrudgingly accepted.
Chris isn’t new to the candy game, he said. After he first became homeless in 2008, he said he would dumpster dive behind the Union Square Ghiradelli store, finding entire cases of expired chocolate.
“I was living off that stuff,” Chris said. “Especially for people who do opiates, it really helps keep the edge off. It elevates the pleasure center of the brain.”
A pile of discarded chewing gum packets and a beer can, with a scooter laying nearby on a concrete surface.
Studies have shown a high correlation between opioid use and sugar intake, leading some experts to believe that they activate similar functions in the brain.
As the night markets have grown in notoriety, Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom cracked down on illegal activity around U.N. Plaza. Federal DEA agents, the California Highway Patrol and local police have descended on the area since June, eliciting both criticism and applause. The plaza’s new skate park has been lauded as a success in changing the daytime vibe. But at night, old habits prove hard to break in the area.
San Francisco police have arrested over 2,300 people under those efforts, and the Department of Public Works has also ramped up its enforcement of street vending.
A person crouches on the side of the street as a police car drives by a group of people standing on the sidewalk.
“Even if we’re not doing drugs anymore, we’re still addicts,” said a man named Bill, who wouldn’t give his last name because he knew he was committing a crime. Bill sold $50 worth of candy bars in less than 10 minutes by The Standard’s count. “Drugs are just one of our vices,” he said.
Between meth-mouth and the sugar treats, seems like a dental hygienist could do well there.
She’d have to split the take with an armed guard, though.
I thought the candy had the dope in it. You mean I was just buying plain candy?
Example:
>img src = "https://content.sfstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/20240215_unplazayouthmarket_-0324.jpg?w=2048&q=75" width = 600>'
(i had to reverse the first '<' or you'd see the picture again, not the HTML)
Thanks.
Isn’t their one you can reduce by dimension?
Good post, though. Funny. Sad, but funny. San Francisco used to be such a great city.
This is not the Babylon Bee?????????????
Maybe, but I barely know enough HTML to post pictures here that stay on the screen.
Perhaps someone else can help?
I think I have it somewhere.
East coast, places like New York probably not so much.
It has almost been 10 years.
High school bands could be making a fortune.
Well, sugar actually is a pretty strong drug that you can OD on (sugar coma and all that). We joke about it, but there’s some truth to the idea that it can be a drug with a pretty strong impact in its highs and lows.
That is awesome! Thank you.
When my 4 month old granddaughter went in for minor surgery, they hooked her up to a sugar drip.
“As effective as morphine for babies,” they said.
BTW, if you use the %, no matter if you zoom in or out on the webpage, the picture will always stay at the % (stay the same size).
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