Whenever I hear talk of decriminalising hard drugs, I think of “Hamsterdam”. That was the street name for an enlightened, albeit fictitious, decriminalisation scheme in the US TV series, The Wire, one of the most informed dramas about the impact of the drug problem on working-class communities. A sensible and humane police chief, despairing at how hard drugs were wrecking Baltimore’s black community, arranged for his officers to turn a blind eye to heroin and crack use in an uninhabited zone of the city. The results were initially pretty positive. Health workers were able to locate and target drug users with medical help, counselling, clean needles, and condoms. Police officers could intervene quickly if violence erupted. Children were no longer exposed to street drug culture and local neighbourhoods became peaceful again as the gangs moved off the corners.