THE government has set steep targets in aiming to halve drug abuse in less than ten years - as the measure of addicts causing 30 per cent of all today's crime makes starkly clear.

But in targeting anti-drug activities - and, rightly, using millions seized from drug traffickers to help fund them - it is recognising the truth that most users are victims first and criminals second.

And in putting a strong emphasis on help and education to prevent young people getting into trouble in the first place, it is taking the right approach to what is the country's greatest social evil.

But there must be no soft approach towards the pushers.

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