The statistics reported in today?s 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.