During the height of its heroin crisis in the 1980s, the Netherlands chose a “third way” to respond to drug use — neither punishment nor abstinence, but harm reduction. Today, that approach has helped drive overdose deaths to some of the lowest in the world, including in the US, through policies like safe consumption rooms, drug checking and health-first policing. But in some parts of the US South there is opposition. The Gulf State Newsroom’s Drew Hawkins went to the Netherlands to find out what their approach looks like.