- According to The San Francisco Chronicle, successful drug dealers can earn $350,000 or more per year.
- A senior software engineer at Google can earn a base pay of $211,000 or more.
- City officials have been struggling to find a viable solution to the widespread open-air drug market.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, successful drug dealers can earn six-figure incomes in San Francisco, where city officials have been working to address the pervasive open-air drug markets in local neighborhoods.
While low-level peddlers struggle to make ends meet, more successful dealers can make over $350,000 per year, as discovered by the Chronicle during an 18-month investigation into the drug trade in the Bay Area.
On the other hand, senior software engineers at Google, who are based in the world’s tech hub in San Francisco, earn a base salary of approximately $211,000, not including stock options and bonuses, according to data from Glassdoor and Levels.fyi, a tech salary database.
The allure of such high incomes has made drug dealing an appealing but dangerous option for some Honduran migrants seeking to escape poverty and violence in their home villages. The Chronicle notes that Honduran migrants, particularly from Siria Valley, north of Tegucigalpa, dominate the open-air drug trade in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods.
While most Hondurans who come to the Bay Area or the US find legal work, a study analyzing arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety reveals that undocumented immigrants, in general, have lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants when it comes to felony offenses.
Some Honduran dealers interviewed by the Chronicle mentioned that they had engaged in legal work before turning to the drug trade, while others specifically came to the Bay Area to sell drugs. Many of the dealers highlighted the lack of documentation and education as obstacles preventing them from securing higher-paying jobs in the US.
Interestingly, the money earned from drug dealing has led to a real estate boom in the villages of Siria Valley, with new homes and mansions popping up, as reported by the Chronicle. “There’s no other option for them to make a house in that way if it wasn’t for selling drugs in the United States,” stated local resident Ofelia Raudales Carela.
San Francisco has been grappling with illegal drugs in its neighborhoods for many years. Previous attempts to address the issue through increased policing and arrests have proven ineffective, as noted by the Chronicle.
Currently, city and state officials are once again pledging to crackdown on the open-air drug market by intensifying enforcement efforts and providing treatment options.
Just recently, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the local police department had doubled the number of arrests for drug dealing in the two neighborhoods in the past two weeks. She also revealed the seizure of more than 9.5 kilos of fentanyl during that period.
—London Breed (@LondonBreed)
July 13, 2023
No comments were obtained from representatives of Google and the San Francisco Police Department outside of business hours.
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