Well it's controversial, whenever its discussed, this question about drugs, what do you do? One thing's for sure: we seem to have failed on every front. Never has there been such a saturation of such drugs in our society and such abuse of the well-being of our young people and such crime. There was a bloke murdered in Surrey Hills arguably at the centre of a drug ring. Frank Sartor, the Lord Mayor, last night supported the trial of legal heroin for hard core users claiming it could reduce crime. Talking about the medically controlled prescription of drugs for long term users. I never thought I would even be giving serious consideration to such a proposal. I have to say we spent billions of dollars on drug education and everything else and we still have an increasing number of kids addicted, dying and the proliferation of drug sellers, people making big money out of drug addition. Is there some way you can eliminate the drug pushers? Would you do that if you sold it to the addict?

The Daily Telegraph have taken a tough stand on this as I have in the past) we've almost been at one and they've always had an excellent view on this, it's just interesting to note their view today. Editorially, they say Mr Sartor is stepping well beyond his brief by toying with such an idea . . . but I would have thought there would have been public debate on this. John Howard rejected the heroin trial in the ACT last year . . . I said at the time it was the right thing to do but the stuff still keeps coming in, its quality is questionable, mixed with everything imaginable and it's killing kids and I for one have seen it first hand. The Daily Telegraph editorial says that nothing has changed and it is absolutely right, in fact it's gotten worse. We've tried everything, do we need to try something different? The Telegraph is right when it says the heroin trade is an insidious cancer within our society that destroys the lives of users and their families. The question is: What is the appropriate answer? I'm not sure the answer is as forthcoming as it once was. I used to think that cracking down on this and arresting people, charging people, jailing people, you were going to win the battle. We are not winning the battle. Do we have to decide to re-deploy the troops? My view is we might have to.