Hamsterdam, The War on Drugs, and Canadian Lesson Just got to the part of @mjwerry's Broken Country that reminded me of any interesting story arc in The Wire. In season 3, police commander Bunny Colvin realizes that arresting dealers isn’t stopping Baltimore’s drug trade, so he creates three unofficial “free zones.” These are places where police tolerate drug buying and selling while aggressively going after anyone dealing outside the zones. The experiment becomes known as “Hamsterdam"—and it worked. Getting dealers off the corners stops the gang violence, and the neighborhood comes to life. Kids start playing outside again. Health workers distribute clean needles, provide testing, and connect some users with treatment. But inside Hamsterdam, addiction and desperation are concentrated into some truly dystopian shit. Hamsterdam didn't get rid of the suffering. It just moved it away from people who aren't "in the game" and don't want to be either. Now eventually it all blows up, but it raises an interesting question that Canada has accidentally answered. Since we have lost the war on drugs—i.e., we aren't gonna be able to stop the supply of or demand for drugs—should we just run damage control, a.k.a. "Harm Reduction?" Even if that means tolerating a place where addiction’s consequences remain painfully visible? Let's take a quick look at BC, Canada. Now it's not exactly Hamsterdam there, but they've got supervised consumption sites that provide places to use drugs under supervision along with "Safe Supply"—the government's version of drugs so you don't have to deal with your stuff being cut with garbage. Safer supply expanded in 2020. Gang-related homicide victims went from 24 in 2019 to 26 in 2020, 40 in 2021, and 53 in 2022. An initial rise, but then the direction reversed: 38 in 2023, 26 in 2024, and 19 in 2025. That’s a 64% decline from the peak. Between 2019 and 2025, recorded break-ins fell by 44%, vehicle theft fell by 41%, and total property crime fell by 19%. On the flip side, overdose deaths rose from 992 in 2019 to 2,591 in 2023, before falling to 1,828 in 2025. Even after that decline, deaths remained about 84% above the 2019 level. So is this a possible solution to the drug problem? Just let people do what they're gonna do, but only in certain places, and come down hard if they step out of the zones... Or has a country made a Faustian bargain disguised as progress? Broken Country explores this question along with many others about the state of Canadian politics. And if you're American, this is particularly relevant, as some states are attempting something like this. I had friends in high school whose parents operated a safe needle exchange. Watch Broken Country here: brokencountry.com