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Peter's one bedroom flat in a North East London low-rise is one of the more easy-going crack houses around. There are two huge black mastiffs taking up half the space and barking more than anyone wants them to, but it nevertheless operates as a secure, mildly cosy place for a group of crack and heroin users from the local area to gather and buy and take drugs.READ ON MOTHERBOARD: A Former Tweaker Defends Tumblr's Hardcore Meth Scene
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"People invite their friends, but if their vibe is no good, or if they are a cantankerous person, we tell them no way," says Lynval, sitting in his office, which has a monitor showing the CCTV feed from every room. "But this place has always been about bringing people together and selling good herb. We don't sell skunk that makes you go crazy; we sell herb that gives you more consciousness. As Bob Marley sang: 'Excuse me while I light my spliff / Good god, I gotta take a lift / From reality I just can't drift.'"Lynval, a committed Rastafarian, says most customers are men in their thirties, although he has one group of women who are regulars. It's also a gathering place for Africans in London, he says, who have arrived from Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria. "For some people it's the closest thing they have to a family. Most of the community centers are closed, and here people talk about family matters, music, Jeremy Corbyn—whatever they want. We have solved many problems here."If drugs are banned, it follows that people who take them will try to find secretive places to get high, out of sight of the law.What this means in a wider sense is less straightforward. Weed's not such a worry (though the government are potentially losing out on billions by not opening their own shops), but the harder drugs are. From a harm reduction viewpoint, it makes sense that if you're going to take something that could make you overdose, you're surrounded by people who would try to ensure you don't die, rather than literally throw you away. So, context very much taken into account, surely places like Peter's are a good thing.In a more progressive world, however, things could conceivably be taken one step further. In 2012, Danish officials opened five "fixing rooms"—places where users could inject themselves with clean needles under the supervision of trained medical personnel—in Copenhagen. Earlier this year, figures from Denmark's Health Ministry revealed that there wasn't a single death from any one of the 301 overdoses onsite; that more users have sought help breaking their addiction than in previous years; and that the volume of used needles lying around in the district of Vesterbro, where the fixing rooms are located, has fallen 80 percent since they opened. A similar facility in Sydney, opened 15 years ago, has seen the same kind of success.In a drug underworld that by its very nature must operate in the shadows, what's happening in Copenhagen appears to demonstrate pretty convincingly that bad things are more likely to happen if drugs are kept behind closed doors.The latest relevant figures from the British government revealed that there were more drug-related deaths last year in the UK than any other year since records began. Coincidentally, our current drug policy remains the same as it always has: stubbornly regressive and wildly ineffective. If the Home Office wants to see fewer people dying, perhaps it's time they offer addicts an alternative to the covert, sometimes actively harmful, environments they've had to resort to.Follow Max on Twitter.READ ON VICE NEWS: Parents Busted After Buying 20 Pounds of Heroin on Family Trip to Disneyland Paris