BOLTON coroner Mr Aidan Cotter deals on average with one heroin related death of a person aged under 40 years every week.

This harsh reality is fact.

These figures can not be justified or sweetened to be made more palatable.

In fact, they do not even take into account deaths of heroin addicts driven to suicide, or who die from other related medical conditions.

Mr Cotter is quite right. This harsh reality has to be driven home. Young people are dying every week and stronger action is needed to halt this.

Cigarettes and alcohol do endanger health. That, too, is irrefutable, but again, Mr Cotter correctly points out that they can not be treated as being on the same scale as heroin.

It is not belittling the dangers of cigarettes and alcohol to say that heroin is more dangerous. We agree with the Bolton coroner that heroin does need to be treated in a class of its own. And we can only mirror his horror that in one information magazine distributed to schools, heroin was put on a par with cigarettes.

Yes, in the long run cigarettes may contribute to more deaths, but that is because thousands more people use them. Youths need to listen to the chilling words of Mr Cotter, a man with first-hand experience of dealing with heroin addicts -- "If you take heroin the chances of you dying are very, very high."