The statistics reported in today’s Royal Gazette about heroin use among incoming prison inmates demonstrate, if anyone needed reminding, how serious the Island’s drugs problem is. Seventeen percent of inmates tested positive for heroin and 70 percent tested positive for some kind of drug abuse.

It is tempting to dismiss the statistics as being typical of hardened criminals when, as National Drug Agency research officer Dr. Ken Garfield-Douglas says, people can go to prison for relatively minor civil offences like failure to pay child support.

What the statistics suggest is that Bermuda’s drugs problem, after more than three decades of anti-drugs effort, is worsening.

There can be no doubt that “hard drugs” like heroin and cocaine are debilitating and destructive, both for the user and for those around him or her, from families to work colleagues to whole neighbourhoods.

The social and economic costs of drug abuse are too great for the community to turn a blind eye. To that end new Drugs Control Minister Wayne Perinchief clearly has his heart in the right place, but if he is to have any success at all, he needs to have the tools to do the job.

So it is worrying when he admits that he would rightly like to see drugs testing made mandatory in the Police Service, but he has to take care not to step on Home Affairs Minister Randy Horton’s toes, since Mr. Horton has responsibility for the Police and public safety.

Mr. Perinchief cannot be expected to lead the way in reducing drug abuse if he must spend his time worrying about upsetting his Cabinet colleagues. He needs to be given real power now.Retirement ageGovernment is closely examining the idea of increasing the retirement age, and it is the right move.

As Bermuda’s population ages, the burden of providing pensions will also grow, creating a heavier and heavier financial burden for the working population and senior citizens alike.

At the same time, improved health care means today’s 65-year-old is fitter and more vigourous than retirees of earlier generations. And very often the retiree is not ready to be “put out to pasture”, especially if he or she does not have the necessary financial wherewithal, which is precisely the situation that something like half of the Island’s seniors do not.

So if people wish to continue to work and are mentally fit and physically healthy, why shouldn’t they? In a community in which something like a third of the workforce is non-Bermudian, it makes no sense to force Bermudians out of the workforce and career.

Nonetheless, there are areas that need to be looked at carefully. There are also people who are more than ready to retire at 65 and it would be invidious — and possibly illegal to withhold full pensions — from people who choose to stop work then in the event that the retirement age is increased.

There is also the question of people clinging on to jobs when they are genuinely unable to meet the demands put upon them. There needs to be some kind of mechanism to judge whether a person needs to be forced into retirement.

At the same time, Government is also right to be looking at raising the levels of contributions to the Contributory Pension Fund, and rightly so. It is probably time to consider increasing the mandatory contributions to the private pension schemes as well in order to assure today’s workers of a sound pension when they retire.