comprehensive and very sensible Sharpe Report into the misuse of drugs in relation to football in Bermuda, which this newspaper reproduced in full yesterday, suggested a need for major financial assistance for football from Government, a national lottery for sport, a Bermuda football foundation, or a combination of all three.

We have no idea if anything will ever come of this report or if one single recommendation will ever be implemented. Government has a bad habit of treating reports as solutions and of ignoring most of what any report says.

That being the case, Sir John Sharpe and his committee may have wasted their time. That would be a shame. This report could save Bermudian football, and perhaps other spectator sports, from a great deal of future grief.

The idea of a lottery to support all sorts of institutions from the Hospital to the arts has been suggested in the past. Generally the churches look unfavourably on gambling, one of the grounds being that the poor will gamble away what little they have. The truth of gambling in Bermuda is simple. Anyone who wants to gamble in Bermuda can do so, much of it at sports clubs, whenever they wish but what they gamble has no side benefit to Bermuda's institutions.

We accept the fact that many sporting clubs need financial help but we think that the returns from a lottery would be better applied to the Hospital, where they would have general benefit, or to the overall "war on drugs'', since drugs know no barriers.

We accept the statement in the Sharpe Report that the use of illicit drugs in sport is widespread and increasing. That being the undoubted case, it would not seem sensible to use a lottery to finance an attack on drugs in football and allow misuse to go unfought elsewhere.

Sporting clubs have generally been allowed liquor licences with the argument that the proceeds of bar sales go to support sport. With notable exceptions, the sports clubs have sold liquor at all hours to all and sundry, even to young people, with the incongruous excuse that alcohol sales support sport, especially youth sport.

It is not a great step from alcohol support of sport to drug use in sport.

Indeed there are repeated reports that a few sports clubs are used as venues for drug pushing. The liquor licensing laws as they apply to "private clubs'', many of which are not private in any real sense, are lax in the extreme. Lax behaviour in one area of drugs is almost certain to lead to problems in another and alcohol is a drug, although legal. The licensing hours for clubs should, at the least, be brought in line with commercial bars and alcohol should be divorced from youth sports.

If, as the report says, the smoking of marijuana by football players is commonplace, and we believe the report is correct, then it is reasonable to assume that drugs are prevalent in other sports. It would seem logical to us to extend the recommendations of this report for such things as background checks, testing and searches to all sports, even though that was outside this committee's terms of reference.