that one third of Bermudians were cocaine addicted. That figure placed efforts against drug addiction in a kind of limbo for some time. The problem lost its validity. A disbelieving public simply began to dismiss warnings about drug abuse and to turn off whenever statistics were used. Clearly the person who used those figures hoped to shock and did not intend to turn off the public, but that is what happens when the public becomes incredulous.

We think a similar thing is very likely to happen now that generally accepted magazines like Penthouse and Playboy have been branded as pushing sex with children at the conference on child abuse. This is not to defend Playboy or Penthouse and certainly not to defend pornography but we think the public has come to accept these publications and that is the reason for their wide distribution. The speaker suggested tighter control of imports which will not happen and members of the public are unlikely to carry out the suggested boycott of their favourite grocery store because it sells Playboy.

But these unrealistic suggestions create the grave danger that the public will simply turn off this very valid and valuable conference. The public has already acted strongly and, we think, somewhat irrationally to a questionnaire regarding child abuse because it is uncomfortable with the very idea of child abuse and it may well now reject the conference as invalid because it will see speakers as unrealistic. That would be a great shame because this is a very important conference.

Speakers dealing with subjects as important as drug abuse and child abuse have to be careful not to damage their own cause in the eyes of the public by using material the public will not accept. The causes are too important for rejection.

For its part, the public should accept that sometimes the very material it rejects has validity. There may well be seeds of child abuse in sexually oriented magazines, we do not know. There are countries which accept outright pornography on the grounds that it prevents sexual repression which leads to sexual abuse. The speaker at the Princess Hotel on Thursday was saying quite the opposite, maintaining that pornography leads to sex crimes.

The National Symposium on Children at Risk has the potential to spur Bermuda to do something about the child abuse which we think has been denied and hidden in Bermuda for far too long. There is no sensible person in the Country who wants Bermuda's children to be at risk. We must do everything we can to prevent this abuse.

As Dr. June Hill of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital's child protection team told the conference, "We have no idea how often it occurs, but we do know its probably greatly under reported even now.'' "Greatly under reported'' concerns us greatly.