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For Jeremy Swain, chief executive of homelessness charity Thames Reach Bondway, this is the kind of case he and his staff deal with on a daily basis. The man with the bad batch of heroin was homeless and he earned the money to buy the drugs through begging from passers-by in London.

"Around 75% of those who beg do so to serve a heroin or crack addiction," says Swain, "and that's a conservative estimate." For him, the equation is simple: drugs are killing the people his organisation is trying to help, and the drugs are being bought with money earned begging. That's why, last month, Thames Reach Bondway launched a campaign designed to discourage the public from giving money to beggars – and pitched itself into the heart of a blazing row.

This is not the first campaign of its kind. In 2000, the government's rough sleepers initiative launched "Change a Life", a scheme directed at getting the public's money out of the hands of beggars and into charity collecting tins. The message has been picked up by Camden, Birmingham and Manchester councils. Today, street begging, always a controversial topic, has moved up the political agenda and into the pages of the national press amid controversy over the rights or wrongs of this type of project.

"Campaigns like this just confuse the issue in the public's mind," says Naomi Fuller, a spokesperson for homelessness charity Crisis. "We would never go as far as actively running a poster campaign," says a spokesperson for the Salvation Army, although it was one of the charities that benefited from the donation hotline set up as part of the Change a Life initiative.

Adam Sampson, director of homelessness charity Shelter, goes further. "We have issues around high-profile advertising stigmatising homeless people as drug users," he says. "The correlation is questionable. Not all beggars are homeless and not all homeless are drug users." Sampson's concern is based on experience: before joining Shelter, he was chief executive of the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust. "Thames Reach Bondway are not experts in drug use," he continues. "I don't think it is for a homelessness charity to take this approach."

Swain pours scorn on this idea. "It's easy for a policy organisation to make that point," he says. "When you're working on the street, you wonder how many more people you are going to lose."

Sampson is also concerned that if the campaign is successful, the problem may be displaced. "If you are an addict with a habit to feed, you have to find the money somehow, by begging, prostitution or crime," Sampson says. "Merely to cut off begging without any help or alternative will cause them to find the money some other way."

Again, Swain disagrees: "That's a great disservice to those who beg. The vast majority wouldn't steal. A few may go to stealing but many more would have to consider their options when not faced with such easy pickings as begging."

A case in point, he says, is that of a man at one of the charity's centres near Waterloo station. Thames Reach Bondway's workers struggled to get him off drugs and off the streets because he could easily earn £40 a day begging at the station.

Westminster council is leading the "tough love" approach in London. Last week, it announced a series of initiatives designed to eradicate begging in the centre of the capital, including a ban on street drinking and the creation of a "rapid intervention team". This team will walk the streets of the borough and, when it comes across rough sleepers or beggars, tell them to go to a hostel. A telephone hotline has been set up so the public can report rough sleepers and the council is exploring the possibility of banning the use of sleeping bags on some streets.

The council's approach is in line with the signals emanating from central government since the start of the rough sleepers initiative. The government claims that since, on paper, there are hostel places for all and since it is now unnecessary to have a fixed address in order to claim benefits, there is no reason to beg. The antisocial behaviour white paper contains a provision that would make begging a "recordable offence", meaning that the courts can order beggars to seek drug treatment or go to prison.

Yet it will still be up to the public to decide what to do with their spare change. For all the poster campaigns and surrounding controversy, giving to beggars – or not – will remain, as Crisis' Fuller says: "an absolutely private, personal matter". The effectiveness of all of these initiatives, for good or ill, will depend on the public's conscience. In the mean time, sleeping rough will remain a rough deal for all concerned.