Canada’s Vancouver Eastside, where drug dealing, prostitution, and homelessness reign supreme, is known as Vancouver’s “square mile of vice.” This area also houses the city’s sole residential black community, and 70 percent of its residents are aboriginal.  According to the UK’s Daily Mail, the dumping ground for the city’s problems has now become part of a controversial program aimed at providing free crack pipes to its drug-addicted population in an effort to stop the spread of HIV and Hepatitis B.

The Vancouver Coastal Health Harm Reduction program, which is running for eight months as a trial, has five centers that distribute thousands of kits that include heat-resistant/shatterproof glass pipes, filters, alcohol, swabs, mouthpieces, screens and push sticks — everything a crack addict needs to make his crack-smoking habit sanitary. The majority of users are males between the ages of 20 to 60.