Pembroke West resident Joan Lindo, speaking at a residents meeting attended by the Police, seems to have summed up the feelings of her neighbours, who are tired of drug dealers plying their evil trade on their streets.

Pembroke West is far from the only area which suffers from this problem.

Residents across the Island have been suffering from the same plague and share the same frustrations.

Those frustrations stem largely from the feeling that nothing is being done by the Police or the Government to end the problem.

That may be unfair, but residents in known drugs areas who do not see Police cars on patrol and see the same people selling their goods day after day with impunity will eventually say enough is enough.

The Police often do know who the drugs dealers are and where they work, but that does not always mean they can simply drive up and make an arrest because the sellers are often sophisticated and good at evading arrest or conviction.

As a short term remedy, Government and the Police should launch a Cleansweep-style operation which would at least get the dealers off the streets.

This is not, and cannot be, the whole answer. But it could be a first step in making the lives of dealers so uncomfortable that they will not want to be on the streets.

As Commissioner Jean-Jacques Lemay noted at the Pembroke West meeting, the Police cannot win the drugs war on their own; it will take a collective effort in which residents like those in Pembroke West must do their part.

That might include neighbourhood watch, or grass roots efforts, such as the Ord Road-Spring Hill Against Drugs (ORSHAD) group, which for a brief time took back its streets.

Similar groups, led from the neighbourhoods but backed by the Police and Government agencies, need to be established.

Residents can also call Crime Stoppers' Rat on a Rat scheme and make sure the Police have the intelligence they need to investigate and arrest street dealers.

On the other side of the coin, Government has to provide more rehabilitation services to drug users and it must also speed up the plans for the Drugs Court and alternative sentencing.

Government must also make a distinction between drug users and dealers, with penalties for dealing that are so harsh that they are a true deterrent.

More surveillance which can be entered as evidence in a trial is needed. In that way, a known dealer who may be caught with a relatively small amount of drugs can receive an appropriate sentence.

At the same time, Government, which surely recognises that drugs can only be eradicated by reducing demand, needs to give more support to prevention schemes such as REACH, PRIDE and Youth to Youth and to rehabilitation schemes to help those users who wish to stop to do so with as much help and support as possible.

Only by taking this kind of approach will neighbourhoods like Pembroke West be safe for their residents again.