SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — A group of Bay Area mothers whose children suffer from drug addiction is alarmed that San Francisco’s new Linkage Center allows people to openly use drugs.

The Linkage Center is the backbone of Mayor London Breed’s emergency action plan for cleaning up the Tenderloin. Drug abuse and drug dealing are rampant in this section of the city.

The center opened just last month as a place where people suffering from homelessness, mental health disorders, and addiction can be “linked” with housing opportunities, rehabilitation services, and other public health services.

Mothers Against Drug Deaths will protest outside the center at 8 a.m. Saturday to demand that city officials shut down an area of the center where supervised drug use is taking place. 

“It’s like having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in an open bar,” said mother Michelle Leopold.

Leopold lost her 18-year-old son, Trevor, to fentanyl in 2019 after he struggled with addiction for several years.

Allowing open air drug abuse in the same place where addicts are trying to get clean and sober is “totally inappropriate and must stop immediately,” the group wrote.

“Mayor Breed needs a better strategy if she is serious about solving the humanitarian crisis on our streets,” the group wrote.

Last month, KRON4 asked Breed about concerns surrounding reports of drug use at the center.

“We can’t control who does or doesn’t, do or do not use drugs, at any given location. Our whole point of why we started this Linkage Center is to meet people where they are and try and get them the help and support that they need,” Breed said.