the victims of drug abuse and with Bermuda's drug problem. This newspaper has been forced to the reluctant conclusion that politicians have no real interest in seeking or reaching a solution to the very difficult drug problem. They want to have drugs and a war on drugs as a political platform and as an attention getting problem to bandy about before the public and as a stick with which to beat one another but they do not want a solution. We have been forced to think that, where politicians are concerned, drugs are a valuable political weapon. Talking about doing something, anything, about drugs gets politicians elected. We think politicians do not want a solution because that would deprive them of their war and they keep their careers alive by waging that war. That's cynical, we know. We hope we are wrong.

The National Alcohol and Drug Agency achieved a great deal more than it is ever given credit for. It was, in the end, abandoned in favour of the still proposed National Drug Authority which arose out of the second Archibald Report. Why? The truth seems to be that NADA pushed too hard for action and was resented by politicians and by senior civil servants who cannot cope with problems which take more imagination that new crack-down laws. Government thwarted NADA by never giving it legislative stature and by seldom treating its recommendations seriously. Government was happy with NADA as long as it could point to having appointed someone to do something about drugs. When NADA actually had the nerve to ask that things be done, action be taken and laws passed that was too much for Government which, basically, wanted the war on drugs to be words not deeds.

The final axe seems to have come for NADA when it spent endless hours examining, researching and revising the Liquor Licensing Act only to have the recommendations shelved. Why? Government was paralysed when four or five people objected to a NADA recommendation that alcohol sales from chill boxes should be banned.

The new National Drug Authority may be a semi-independent QUANGO but, in the end, it will have the same problems with Government because to achieve anything Government will have to pass legislation and we do not think it will ever pass any alcohol or drug legislation to which even the smallest number of people object.

As an example, for any drug programme to be effective, it will be necessary to greatly revise the present treatment facilities. Right now just about no-one working in those facilities is properly qualified. That is shameful but we do not think Government will move to correct the situation, no matter what any drug body recommends.

On the other side, the Authority will also be faced with the fact that the liquor merchants are a powerful cartel, listened to by Government. There are also, of course, those who feel that, in a tourist resort, there should be virtually no restrictions on alcohol promotion or sales.

We think that, if it ever gets formed, the National Drug Authority will have to keep foremost in its deliberations the fact that the drug problem will only go away if and when the demand stops, not the supply, the demand. If the Authority decides to set out to stop the supply, it will only inflict on the Country further draconian laws to criminalise the young and alienate the people.

Continued tomorrow....