HOOKED on heroin, thrown out of home, jobless, without qualifications and jailed as an habitual thieving junkie.

With that kind of past, what, at the age of just 22, were the prospects for Paul back on the streets of Blackburn?

More of the same drug-driven degradation and crime?

The gutter?

Even death?

Today, as we report, this young man is heading for university.

Already, he has A-levels and a year at Oxford behind him.

His life has been transformed.

From prison and the grip of years of drug abuse, he has gone to renewed dignity and opportunity that once he could never have imagined.

He is lucky.

He has been helped by a remarkable scheme and a remarkable man, Father Jim McCartney, who runs the St Anne's House drop-in centre in Blackburn for outcasts like Paul.

But he has also helped himself. And, above all, he has shown that drug addicts can recover.

Too often they are written off by others as incurable, useless scum.

And many, perhaps, believe themselves to be beyond hope or help.

But is not Paul's case proof of how wrong this attitude is?

For addicts, for all the problems they cause themselves and others, are essentially victims who have fallen foul of a modern-day scourge.

They need help.

Paul's encouraging story shows they can be helped and that they can go on to help themselves, climb out of the gutter and become useful and responsible members of society again.

There is no doubt that it takes time, toil and money - and that there may be many setbacks along the way.

But in the fight against drugs, Paul's own successful fight-back points to the need for a fresh outlook and firm investment in the kind of effort that helped him - while the brunt of the law's attack on drug abuse needs to be aimed at the real scum, the suppliers who snare and make victims of our young people.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.