14 people, indicated to just about everyone that Bermuda was not very serious about drugs. When you announce a war but fail to hire enough soldiers you can hardly expect to be taken seriously.

The official stand on combatting drugs seems to be that we will work on the demand through community agencies while leaving it to Police to disrupt the supply. To do that we have to provide Police.

Every one of us knows of a location where drugs appear to be sold quite openly. How many times have you wondered why the Police do nothing about it? The answer is under-staffing.

Detective Inspector Roseanda Jones, who is heavily involved in the narcotics section, is quoted as saying, "Today there is a place in every single parish where there is known drug activity, and there are areas which are much worse than Court Street. When I first joined the Police Service there were three or four major dealers. Now, everybody is in on the act -- there are a lot more major distributors.'' Inspector Jones has said that: "A recent report showed that 80 percent of crimes committed were drug related. That is far too high.'' We agree but we also think that the drugs squad is far too small. The number of officers sends a message that not much is going to happen.

A drug addict's first victim is the family, says Inspector Jones. That is true yet it is very clear that a great many families receive the cash benefits of drug dealing. It may be that something as high as a quarter of the households in Bermuda receive some financial benefit from drug dealing. That includes the household of any merchant who accepts large amounts of cash in return for goods.

The drug economy is a major factor in Bermuda today. It may be that it has been allowed to become such a factor that we are not prepared to do anything very much to disrupt it. Every time there is a debate on drugs the opposition Progressive Labour Party makes it very clear that it is not seriously at war on drugs. The truth is that it is almost impossible to stem the supply even though we must try for now and the only long term solution is to curb the demand. Yet community agencies, like the Police, appear to be under-funded.

The narcotics squad is expected to double in size with six officers added in the next few weeks and the rest added during the next financial year. But then we will only have a small squad in a Police Service of 427 officers. That appears to be the best the Police can do with current funding. The squad will also be dealing with money laundering and the confiscation of drug profits if the Police get the new laws they have asked for. In our view, those laws should have been dealt with before the House recessed for the summer, considering that it will not reconvene until November. Clearly the Government is not making drugs a priority.

It seems to us that politicians, for whatever reasons, are keeping the Police and the agencies short of both cash and legislation. Yet drugs and the crimes committed as a result of drug abuse, are at the top of the people's list of concerns. We have to wonder what the priorities are for a Government which revels in expensive GP cars and then short-changes the war on drugs.