teenagers questioned admitted they continued to have sex and refused to use condoms. Of those 81 percent said they learned about AIDS in schools.

Therefore they are aware of the dangers of unprotected sex. The Allan Vincent Smith Foundation is dedicated to helping AIDS victims and is not directly concerned with teenage pregnancy. Yet condoms are a deterrent to both pregnancy and AIDS.

While abstaining from sex is the ideal, the reality is that teenagers do not asbstain because that is not the way today. Churches, teachers and parents condone adult adultery and therefore have no credibility when they ask teenagers to abstain. That being the case, teenagers need to be encouraged to, at the least, protect themselves from both pregnancy and AIDS.

Bermuda does not seem to be able to deal with the problem in a realistic way.

According to a story in this newspaper this week we are again passing the problem around among various committees apparently hoping that someone will come up with a magic solution. There is no magic solution.

It is typical of adults that they find the realities of teenage sex difficult to face. They would rather it did not happen and they would like to believe that it does not happen. However professionals in the health establishment and in education should have no such difficulty. They know that the reality is that you cannot stop the young from having sex. They see the teenaged pregnancies. They see the sexually transmitted diseases. They see the ruined lives. Surely they know that condoms are a reality and are a protection, not perfect but a protection.

Yet once again we are preparing to dodge the issue of condoms in schools. It had seemed that the previous Minister of Health, Quinton Edness, had come to an open and outright decision to make condoms available "wherever young people gather''. That must include places of entertainment where sexual encounters so often begin. We think that is realistic and we do not believe, as some people do, that the availability of condoms encourages sex. The availability of sex encourages sex and 55 percent of the young people surveyed say they are taking the risk of engaging in sex without condoms.

Yet we are still worrying about people's rather old-fashioned sensibilities about condoms. We should be treating this as a health factor. We would not expose our young people to a killer disease not associated with sex if we could in any way protect them. Yet we continue to dither about the only protection they now have against AIDS if they engage in sex.