I’LL HAVE WHATEVER THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE IS SMOKING: No, soft-on-crime liberalism isn’t fueling San Francisco’s drug crisis. Libertarianism is.

Many conservative commentators attribute the city’s drug problems to its political liberalism, but this is incorrect. San Franciscans’ liberalism is why the government offers generous health and social care services, without which overdose deaths would be higher, not lower.

What bedevils the city instead is its libertarian, individualistic culture. Since at least the 19th century, Americans have come to San Francisco to be free of traditional constraints back East, to reinvent themselves, to escape the small-mindedness of small towns and to find themselves. This culture underlies the city’s entrepreneurialism, artistic energy and tolerance for diversity in all forms.

But this has a downside when it comes to addiction, which thrives in such a cultural milieu. San Francisco has long been one of the booziest cities in the country as measured by metrics such as bars per capita or percentage of income spent on alcohol. The psychedelic drug revolution and much of the cannabis culture were born in the Bay Area. The “new” crisis around fentanyl is thus not as novel as portrayed: Heavy use of substances has always been part of how San Francisco defines freedom and the good life.

But while addictive substance use brings short-term pleasures, it brings long-term misery and a reduction in freedom. The libertarian assumption that given freedom and tolerance, everyone will rationally and productively pursue their self-interest cannot explain why a starving person would, for example, forgo food in exchange for fentanyl or cocaine.

I hope the guys at Reason magazine are properly ashamed of themselves now for single-handedly ruining San Francisco.