“I say this as a very strong supporter of safe injection sites: [The veto] can’t be used as a reason to not do everything that we possibly can right now,” he said.

“Some of my colleagues have said [safe injection sites are] not going to solve the problem, that we need to stop these drugs, we need to stop the drug dealing, we need to get people into treatment,” he added. “And what I said to them about that is, ‘Yes, yes and yes. So we had a small setback around the safe injection sites, but we need the yes, yes and yes to everything else in the meantime.”

Haney should expect the committee’s GOP lawmakers to push some of those other conversations, said Assemblymember Laurie Davies, a Republican who represents southern Orange County. She successfully pushed legislation this year that will make it easier to distribute fentanyl tests, which allow people to detect the presence of the deadly opioid in other drugs.

“There’s a lot of other things that we need to work on. But I’m just grateful that eyes are opening and they realize this is a crisis and we can do something to stop it,” she said, adding that one part of the conversation needs to be around prosecuting people who sell deadly fentanyl.

“This isn’t just an inner-city problem. It’s affecting every parent, it’s affecting every race and every color,” Davies said. “We’re losing men, women, children, no matter what the races, what their religion is, what their party affiliation is. This is something that affects every single Californian.”

One of those Californians who has been devastated by the impact of opioids is San Francisco resident Amy Cooper. She lost her son, John, to an overdose in 2014 — and then watched the dentist who had prescribed him the drugs without ever meeting him get acquitted at trial.

Cooper said since John’s death, she’s dedicated herself to advocating for solutions and educating people about the fentanyl problem. She said lawmakers need to focus on both education and accountability, including holding both doctors and pharmaceutical companies responsible.

“I can just tell you, 100%, we were uneducated and unaware. We had no idea that this was happening and that it was happening for our son. And then the results are just catastrophic,” she said.

Another aspect of the crisis that some hope to shed light on is the number of young people mistakenly buying drugs — often online — that turn out to be fentanyl. Lee Trope, a pediatric doctor at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, said many of her patients seem to be experimenting with different substances and wind up becoming addicted to fentanyl or overdosing on it.

“They don’t realize what they’re buying, oftentimes on apps like Snapchat,” she said. “They think what they’re buying — they all call it ‘percs’ — they think they’re buying Percocet, which is a … less-potent opioid. And it’s pure fentanyl.”

Jayme Congdon, a pediatrician and researcher at UC San Francisco, said the new select committee will be raising awareness as it does its work — and she also believes shedding light on the issue is the first step toward change.

Congdon said 250 teens are dying in California each year from opioids. That’s seven times the number of pediatric COVID-19 deaths the state has witnessed.

“Because substance use and addiction are stigmatized issues, it’s just one of these topics that I think, you know, people think it’s not going to affect them or their families until it does,” she said. “We’re so pleased to see Assemblymember Haney is taking the lead on this issue so this crisis is hopefully going to start getting the attention that is warranted.”

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Assemblyman Kevin Mullin

South San Francisco Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, with a focus on election reform and climate protections, is running to represent the Peninsula in Congress following the retirement of longtime US Rep. Jackie Speier.

Mullin, the current speaker per tem, has served in the Assembly since 2012, prior to which he served on the South San Francisco City Council for five years. Now, he said he hopes to build on his accomplishments at the state level with a bid to represent the 15th congressional district.

“I’m going to continue my work on democracy and climate resilience, and more broadly the affordability crisis, building an economy that works for everybody,” he said during an interview this week. “We need federal leadership on all of those issues.”

Also in the race is San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa, Burlingame Councilmember Emily Beach and Republican businessman Gus Mattammal. The Daily Journal has run profiles on each of the candidates and will be following up with coverage on the various issues of the race.

Mullin is a South San Francisco native and son of former South San Francisco Mayor and Assemblymember Gene Mullin — but he said he didn’t always have his eyes set on a career in politics. After receiving a communications degree from the University of San Francisco, and DJing for the student radio station, he said his early aspirations included being a radio DJ or a journalist.

“I always was interested in public affairs, I grew up in a house of a government teacher, so I followed civic affairs but if you asked me in college if I’d be running for Congress someday, I would have not believed you,” he said.

Mullin, however, would go on to earn a master’s degree in public administration from San Francisco State University and, at 23 years old, he began working for then East Bay Assemblymember Johann Klehs. A year later, he got a job with Speier’s office, who at the time was a member of the State Assembly. He served as her district director when she was elected to the state Senate, and also worked as a political director for his father’s Assembly office.

“I certainly caught the public service bug once I was working in the Assembly, and really got turned on to the ability of government to help people’s lives,” he recalled. “I got hooked helping people in the community that I had grown up in.”

In the Assembly, Mullin passed more than 60 pieces of legislation, key among them a move requiring mail-in ballots to be sent to all registered voters in the state, a law he said boosts participation from youth and people of color. He’s also worked to increase transparency regarding ballot initiatives and candidate funding.

“We’ve done incredible work in California on democracy, voting rights, voter access to the ballot, that is being taken away in red states across the country and what it points out to me is that we need federal protections built into the law, the For The People Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” he said.

More recently, Mullin helped move $3.7 billion from last year’s state budget for climate resilience, some of which he said he hopes to bring to the district for Bay and wetland restoration. Mullin also authored a bill establishing OneShoreline, the county’s new agency tasked with addressing sea level rise.

He said while voter access would be top priority, his first piece of legislation in the House would be tax exemptions for transit agencies to purchase electric buses.

“The habitability of the planet itself is at risk with climate change, we need to transition to 100% clean energy,” he said. “America needs to lead, needs to follow California’s lead.”

While Mullin would have been termed out of the Assembly in 2024, new district maps drew him out of his district, barring him from seeking reelection this year given his home address. Speier’s retirement announcement followed shortly after draft maps indicated the boundary shift.

“The timing was gratuitous in terms of this opportunity to move up to the Congress,” he said. “But I, like most of her constituents, are sad to see her retire because she’s been such an incredible champion for this Peninsula. She is nothing short of an icon, so these are enormous shoes to fill but I’m deeply touched and honored to have her endorsing me.”

In addition to Speier, Mullin is endorsed by US Rep. Anna Eshoo, the California Democratic Party, the state Labor Federation, Attorney General Rob Bonta, state Senate President per Tem Toni Atkins and a host of other US representatives and members of the California Assembly and Senate.

“My track record has been established and that is why I have the support of so many individuals,” he said. “When you’re talking about being the voice of the San Francisco Peninsula in Congress, you need to have demonstrated the ability to be effective, to get things done in a partisan atmosphere like I have had to deal with in Sacramento.”

A poll released by Mullin’s campaign this week shows he leads over competitors, at 31% compared to Canepa’s 17%, Mattammal’s 9% and Beach’s 8%. The survey was reportedly conducted by questioning 427 likely voters in the district.

His campaign reports having raised more than $605,000.

California’s primary will be held June 7, narrowing the field to two candidates. The general election will be held Nov. 8.

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If at first you don’t succeed, try again.

This is the approach Congregation member David Chiu is taking to end road deaths and injuries.

Along with a chorus of city council members, heads of transportation agencies, lawyers and mayors of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland, Chiu passed legislation on Tuesday to control the use of automated cameras to capture license plates from high-speed vehicles in high-speed vehicles. Communities at risk to curb reckless driving and save lives.

“At some point we have to say that enough is enough because these deaths are completely and completely preventable,” Chiu said.

If passed, Caltrans would need to work with stakeholders to set guidelines for the speed safety program, such as: For example, how many miles per hour a vehicle would have to drive above the specified speed limit in order to trigger the radar of the speed cameras on dangerous roads and work areas.

Assembly Bill 550 is Chiu’s second attempt to codify an automated speed enforcement pilot program to slow cars down and reduce the number of serious injuries and deaths from traffic violence.

He tried for the first time in 2017, but the bill was ultimately shot down due to objections from civil rights and justice attorneys and law enforcement, among other things.

But Chiu said it was different this time: Thousands of Californians continued to be killed in traffic accidents; Science has advocated speed cameras to “stop these pointless deaths”. and a national conversation has emerged about race and law enforcement, including the disproportionate burden people of color carry during interactions such as traffic stops.

Tuesday’s legislation includes tough privacy restrictions, including a ban on facial recognition technology, equity parameters, and a mandate that the program be monitored by local transportation agencies rather than law enforcement agencies.

Violators would be punished with a civil quote capped at a fine of $ 125, with alternative diversion programs available to replace full payment. It wouldn’t add a point to a driver’s license either.

San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin called the nuances of the bill “the right formula” to balance the needs of everyone involved and said he plans to table a resolution in support of the entire board of directors as well as the county transportation authority.

“Let’s do that,” he said.

Around 30 people are killed and another 500 seriously injured on the streets of San Francisco each year. That staggering number has continued as The City nears the Vision Zero 2024 deadline.

Speed ​​is generally considered to be the determining factor in whether a person will live or die as a result of a vehicle collision.

As officials commonly quote, a person hit by a car traveling 20 mph has a 90 percent chance of survival, while someone hit by a vehicle moving 40 mph has only a 20 percent chance of survival Has.

“One thing we do know is speedkills,” said Chiu.

However, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Department and other local transportation authorities still lack the power to make the kind of transformative changes that could really slow vehicles down, most notably the power to use automatic speed monitoring to deter dangerous driver speeds.

“We need every tool we can to make this happen, and there is one thing we are missing at the moment,” said Mayor of London Breed. “The fact that we don’t have automatic speed controls is a problem that keeps us from saving lives.”

Officials stressed that the cameras themselves are mobile and will only be placed in the corridors of the community after rigorous data analysis on the frequency of high speeds and a robust neighborhood engagement process in cities that have opted for the speed safety program.

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