THE other day I had a most disturbing conversation - disturbing for me, that is - on the subject of drugs with a young man well known to me and my family.

He is in his early 20s, well educated, from a highly respectable and relatively successful middle class background. He drinks only moderately, does not smoke and trains regularly at a fitness centre.

He mixes with similar types, young men and women from stable backgrounds, all of whom have jobs and seemingly stable lives. Yet he told me, with alarming candour, that he was the only one from a 'crowd' of around ten who had not at some time dabbled in drugs.

Three at least were seriously addicted to hard drugs and regularly 'Chased Charlie' - the euphemism for cocaine abuse. The rest popped pills in discos to sustain all-night dance sessions which stretch from 2-3a.m. until noon the following day, sometimes later.

The latter is apparently known as 'social drug-taking' rather like 'social smoking' and 'social drinking,' though I can't recall any deaths from the last two, whereas there have been several tragedies from pill-popping.

The conversation stemmed from my astonishment that people were paying extortionate prices for drinks in discos: £2.50 for a bottle of beer is common.

When I questioned the sanity of paying that amount, my young friend informed me that clubs don't sell much alcohol - and it's not just because of their prices.

So many youngsters are getting high on drugs that booze doesn't figure in the equation, though water most certainly does. A combination of high energy dancing and Ecstasy tablets brings dehydration and club owners discovered that tap water was being consumed by the bucketful.

This led some of the more unscrupulous to turn off the supply and flog the bottled variety at inflated prices.

My young friend went on to say: 'Everyone knows what is going on. The drug problem is much bigger than officially admitted. In a lot of places people turn a blind eye to it. They'd go out of business if they came down too heavily. The ravers would just move on."

I was gobsmacked listening to all this. But when he went on to tell me that heroin and cocaine were easily obtainable in East Lancs, especially Darwen and Blackburn, I felt an overwhelming sense of despair.

Soft, liberal court sentences won't help. Crime these days is significantly drug-related as addicts rob and steal, often with violence, to feed their habit. Getting to children with an anti-drugs message is a step in the right direction.

Restoration of corporal and capital punishment for those who deal in drugs is the only way. Otherwise, my friends, we will all end up Chasing Charlie - or indirectly paying for someone else to do so.

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