BOTH Shirley Mathias and Frank Avenell (Adver, April 6) have missed the key point about my proposal on drugs. The simple fact is the current policy, promoted by successive governments is not working.

We can all swap horror stories, but no country in the world has succeeded in solving this problem through police action alone.

So it is worth considering where other alternatives have worked. With the encouragement of the police some persistent offending heroin addicts in Liverpool were given the drug on prescription and it resulted in a dramatic fall in burglaries. On the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford left-wing independent councillors have led community campaigns to successfully drive dealers off the estate.

If we are going to solve the blight of drugs then we need to go beyond knee-jerk responses.

ANDY NEWMAN

Old Town

Swindon