How do you explain to a child what ‘sharps disposal’ means and why a ‘sharps disposal unit’ for the binning of used needles is needed in a toilet next to the playground in our local park?

It’s a nice park, actually, with tennis courts and trees, and the playground’s recently been redone. There are climbing frames, nets, a wooden castle and middle-class mothers repeating: ‘Good job, Oscar!’ every time their child takes a step.

Opioids make good business sense: more addictive and the highs are short so the customer’s always calling

Opioids make good business sense: more addictive and the highs are short so the customer’s always calling

The toilets are all right too, clean with a surprising lack of smears, and there are little signs in Braille beside each feature: tap, soap, loo roll. Even the ‘sharps disposal’ hole is marked in Braille, for those addicts who’ve injected so much crack that they’ve gone blind yet retain a social conscience.

As a rule, I over-share with my son. I’ve told him about drugs and addicts because in my part of east London there are, increasingly, comatose men (not often women) lying sprawled in the streets. A fortnight ago we turned off Broadway Market and cycled straight into a pair of mottled legs sticking out from under an industrial bin. In the park just a few metres beyond, two thickset men were slumped unconscious on the swings. You have to explain, because if you don’t, what are the kids supposed to make of it? They’ll think that London is littered with dead bodies and no one ever talks about it.

Anyway, what I want to protect them from is not the existence of addicts so much as the ideology that says........

© The Spectator