San Francisco is creating a 'sobering center' for "chronic public inebriates", reports the San Francisco Examiner. It is estimated that drunks currently comprise about 20% of emergency room patients, and the idea is to keep them from tying up expensive emergency room services. Instead of going to the hospital, paramedics will now take drunken patients directly to the 'sobering center', where they will have up to 24 hours to come down from their high.

Why don't they just go back to the old fashioned method of throwing them in the drunk tank at the city jail? You never saw Otis being taken clear over to Mt. Pilot for emergency medical attention.