legalisation of drugs. We say that despite the fact that there are sometimes calls for legalisation and there is a move in the United States towards treating drugs as a public health problem and not as a crime. Drugs certainly are and should be a public health problem but that problem arises in the wake of criminal acts.

It seems to us that the only sensible way to deal with drugs is a three-way approach. First you keep up the defences against importation and sale of illegal drugs or else Bermuda will drown in drugs. At the same time you educate people on the dangers of drugs, beginning at a very young age, in order to curtail the demand. We must decrease demand in order to decrease the production of drugs. At the same time we must provide help and treatment for those addicted with such things as rehabilitation and counselling. The rich can and do afford expensive drug rehabs and Government must worry about the rest including making health insurance cover drug treatments.

There are often arguments about whether time and money are better spent on suppressing importation and pushing, or on rehabilitating addicts. The answer is simple. We have to find the money for both because we could be swamped by either one. Worldwide the demand for dangerous drugs shows no sign of abating.

If we were to legalise drugs we would take the risk of becoming a mecca for drug abusers. We would also expose young people to easy access to drugs in much the same way they are now exposed to tobacco and alcohol.

We should never fool ourselves. The drug trade will not go away until the fashion changes. A great deal of drug use has very little to do with enjoying drugs and a great deal to do with conforming to the fashion and the peer pressure. There is hope. Ash trays are becoming obsolete.

There is, however, little hope of stopping importation now because there will never be enough policemen and we cannot search every visitor. The international drug trade is worth 200 to 300 billion dollars a year making it one of the largest commercial activities in the world. That fact alone means that drug money dominates the economies of countries. Some governments have been swamped by drug traders and drug money. The illegal gains are so great that people will continue to take any risk involved.

There have been many lost battles in this war on drugs. Three decades, hundreds of thousands of dollars and uncounted hours of work and just about no one is happy with the way this war has gone.

Why? Because there is not much in the war for politicians. The war is costly, hard, devoid of glamour, and difficult to translate into votes. Be that as it may, we must win.