I live in in a block of flats which on a main road in East London. It's not a particularly nice area, quite run down. I've lived in London for 20 years now, and it's the most unsafe I've ever felt here. I'm renting a flat for 2 years- I'm 1 year in.

Since I've lived here, in the past year, I've noticed a sudden increase in overt drug use and dealing- or it may have always been here but I've noticed the same faces repeated over time.

There is a group of people - I'd say about 15 of them- who go up and down the road where I live and surrounding roads, dealing drugs in broad daylight, and injecting/smoking drugs in broad daylight. I'm not sure if they're homeless, but from looking at them they are clearly hard drug users. I see them always in a rush to get somewhere, or in groups. I try not to be judgmental as I know these people are fighting battles I could never understand. I also know that calling the police on them and having them incarcerated could cause a lot of harm- I don't trust the CJS in this country to rehabilitate people (but I'm open to being educated on that).

Up to this point I'd been turning a blind eye to this, but when I got home from Work on Monday, I went to the gated entrance to my building (it's not obvious this is an entrance, people often mistake it as a random unused area/dead end), there were two people injecting right in front of me.

When I was younger, I lost a close friend to a drug overdose, and i found this really difficult to see. It happened on Monday and I can't get the image out my mind.

These people also seem fairly friendly, sometimes they will say hello to me, but it makes me feel unsafe. I don't have any kids, but some people in my building do- and they can't be seeing that.

I have never seen the police in my area, even though it's riddled with open drug use. There is a bench opposite my flat they normally sit on and around, openly doing drugs.

What can I do ethnically to deal with this?