Exclusive | Crazy scheme saw San Francisco taxpayers shell out $5M a year to hand out booze to homeless alcoholics

On its face this sounds like a horrible program, but withdrawal from sever alcoholism can be deadly. You can’t just hand out booze to homeless people (which I’m sure is what ended up happening in this case), but under clinical supervision you can step alcoholics down through their withdrawal safely with small doses of alcohol (which was probably the lost initial intent with this.)