Drugs, I am told, are the main cause of crime in Baltimore. Not only are they responsible for much of the theft and burglary but most of the murders too.

Tens of thousands of people in the city are addicted to narcotics such as heroin and crack cocaine. They buy their fixes from dealers in open-air drug markets such as the busy one I walked past yesterday at the corner of Park Heights Avenue and Cold Spring Lane.

As well as the many drug dealers on that corner there is also a building which is home to the ‘I Can’t We Can’ rehabilitation progam. Inside the building is a large room where men sit on one side, women the other, and share their experiences of addiction with each other.

I spoke to people like Karen Royster, a 46-year-old woman who became homeless and lost custody of her six children because of her addiction to crack cocaine. Terry Bullock, a 36-year-old man who has admitted he would steal and attack people to fund his habit. And Kathalene, a 48-year-old who had been taking drugs since 11 and has been arrested ten times.

All of them are now clean and have been for varying periods of between five years, in Kathalene’s case, to just a month, in Terry’s.

Yet they did it not through a government-funded initiative, but through a  group run on a shoestring budget from inside a run-down building behind a supermarket.

Not because they wanted to, but because the I Can’t We Can program is, according to everyone I spoke to there, the only one in the city which offers treatment on demand. In other words, users who turn up there will be seen instantly.

Other programs involve a waiting list. This is unappealing because if drug addicts turn up asking for treatment and are told to return at a later date the chances are that, in the intervening period, they will return to using drugs.

The I Can’t We Can program does not offer its subscribers a substitute, such as methadone. The organizers say that simply giving users another drug does not solve the problem. They would no doubt disagree with a government-backed pilot scheme currently being run in the UK.

 It involves giving heroin addicts two injections a day of actual heroin, not the usual methadone subsitute. It is highly controversial but, after three years, those running it claim that they have seen a huge drop in crime by those taking part.