UNDERSTANDABLY, many will share the qualms of Burnley's MP Peter Pike over the nherently sneaky ploy by trading standards officers of using "decoy" children to trap shopkeepers selling cigarettes to under-age youngsters.

But it would seem that rogue traders snared in crackdowns in East Lancashire deserve all they get -- particularly when they are being warned in advance by officers that the "decoy" tactics are in operation.

If they then go on, through their own irresponsibility and greed, to abuse the law, they can hardly complain about "unfair" entrapment when they are themselves being unfair to youngsters and to society generally.

Controversial though these covert tactics may inevitably be, the vast majority of shopkeepers who sell tobacco need have no fear of them because they are responsible and law-abiding. It's the minority who are not that they are aimed at.

Indeed, they are blessed by government encouragement and, it would seem, they need to be endorsed more fully by the courts which have been imposing fines way below the maximum on offenders -- when the penalties, like the tough entrapment tactics, should surely reflect the aim of sparing youngsters from a lifetime's addiction to smoking and even a death sentence.

From that viewpoint, it is not minor crime that this campaign is against.