Nurses help addicts inject heroin at controversial clinic battling HIV.

Vancouver, British Columbia is considered one of the most beautiful, livable cities in North America.

But there’s a small part of the city that’s stunning in a different way. The downtown east side neighborhood is a grim reminder of the toll drug addiction takes.

Everywhere you look, emaciated addicts walk the streets. Police generally don’t see the point of locking them up. Drugs are exchanged openly in broad daylight. Women on the street prostitute themselves. Over the course of a few concentrated blocks, you’ll see people smoking crack right on the sidewalk, or injecting themselves in an alley with heroin or cocaine.

Not surprisingly, this neighborhood has been visited by another plague: back in the 1990s, this was the epicenter for one of the fastest growing AIDS epidemics in the world.

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