drugs.

First the party refused to help Dr. David Archibald in his study of how to do something constructive in the fight against drugs by refusing to serve on his drugs strategy team. This was not just some ordinary committee where lack of participation by the PLP did not matter much. This was a major project where Bermuda's unity of purpose against drugs was vital.

Then the PLP rushed quickly to cover its blunder by promising its own drugs strategy report which it failed to produce for the people.

Now the Leader of the PLP has taken to attacking the Interim Steering Committee and the embryo National Drug Commission which it is setting up. If Bermuda has a chance of making real progress against drugs, it is through this commission. The anti-drugs body has been carefully put together after studies by a top world authority, Dr. Archibald, which the UBP Government commissioned.

This newspaper has maintained from the very beginning, and we think the public agrees with us, that drugs and alcohol impact on every section of Bermuda and on every person and should be above politics. Public concern about drugs is so great that there is no room for petty politics in the fight against drugs. The PLP should understand that and get to work and help instead of hindering.

But the PLP does not or will not understand that. The things the Opposition says and does continually get in the way and hamper the best efforts of concerned and dedicated people to move against drugs.

The latest disruption was caused when the Leader of the Opposition, followed by a number of Opposition MPs, used the floor of the House of Assembly to attack the Interim Steering Committee into a National Drug Commission. This is the same PLP which refused to help Dr. Archibald study drugs in Bermuda and which failed to produce its own drugs report.

Dr. Archibald, who knows his stuff, intended that the National Drugs Commission should be an independent non-partisan organisation, composed of high calibre citizens, representing different interests but non-political. He felt that in that way all the public would have a sense of confidence in the Commission and the whole Country could move against drugs and alcohol. But the PLP did not help.

Yet every time the Commission is discussed the PLP kicks it nearly to death and then complains that it is not doing anything. The Commission can do a great deal but it cannot thrive and cannot win against drugs as long as it is battered for political purposes. While politicians bicker people die. The public has to wonder what the PLP's agenda really is.

The public cares about drugs, does the PLP? The public sees drugs as Bermuda's number one problem, but the PLP will not commit to help in the fight.

The public wants to get on with action against drugs, but the PLP keeps wounding the group designed to fight drugs.

Right now the PLP appears to us to be very soft on drugs. We have to wonder if the Opposition is so intent on making political noise that it is unwilling to help Bermudians find the way to recovery.