Three Blue City Mayors Innovating on Drug Policy with Keith Humphreys

Keith Humphreys, a friend of the pod, is widely recognized as the country’s leading expert on drug and addiction policy. The Esther Ting Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, Keith served as a senior advisor on drug policy in the Obama White House and on the White House Advisory Commission on Drug Free Communities under President George W. Bush. 

We had Keith on BCB last March for an insightful conversation about why the drug reform and decriminalization efforts that swept West Coast blue cities circa 2020 failed so spectacularly. So now, a year later, we invited Keith back on to share his insights about nascent moves by some prominent blue city mayors to turn away from a progressive-libertarian model of dealing with addiction, and instead embrace a more proactive, interventionist approach to street addiction that mixes therapeutic carrots with coercive sticks.

Over the last year, Keith has been meeting with and advising mayors like Philadelphia's Cherelle Parker, the city’s first African American female mayor, who herself grew up in a crack-ravaged neighborhood. Parker has made a concerted effort to clean up Kensington, one of the country’s most notorious drug neighborhoods; Keith explains how Parker has set up a wellness court where arrested addicts are given the opportunity for rapid diversion as well as a Wellness Village where recovery housing is available to people exiting in-patient treatment. 

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie has also been moving to reimagine addiction policy, adopting a “recovery first” approach that prioritizes not just reducing harm but prodding the addicted towards recovery. Most recently, Lurie has launched a bold experiment with a RESET Center where arrested street addicts are detained until they sober up, with outreach workers attempting to engage them with services in the interim. And in San Jose, Mayor Matt Mahan, a previous BCB guest now running for California governor, has pushed to establish new interventions to engage people suffering on the streets, including threatening arrest for those who repeatedly refuse offers of shelter.

“So if you have a failed War on Drugs followed by a failed libertarian policy, what’s going to be the next act?” Humphreys says. ”What I see the brightest, most creative blue city mayors doing is finding a new way… a city should aspire to more than just reducing overdoses, as important as that is, but should aspire to get people into recovery and back into work and back connected to their families, and some pressure is justified with addiction.”

Our editor is Quinn Waller. 

OUTSIDE SOURCES:

Keith Humphreys. "Blue Cities Are Finally Showing Sanity on Drugs and Crime," City Journal, March 30, 2026.

Keith Humphreys, "Forced Drug Treatment Isn't Horrific. It's a Relief," New York Times, Sept. 2, 2025.

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