I SEE Sheila Jones is still cracking on with her fluoridation campaign and pressing for 'widespread public consultation'.

Presumably, she feels such consultation ought to continue until the people of Bolton produce the answer she is looking for.

May I suggest that, rather than attempting to browbeat us into submission, she brings her tireless efforts to bear on the people who are at the root cause of this modern disease.

Vast profits are made daily from the sale of food and drink which contain high levels of sugar but little else of any real nutritional value.

Children are ruthlessly and cynically targeted by the parasites made rich by expoiting them in this way.

More than 60 per cent of advertising aimed at children promotes this tooth-rotting rubbish and products are packaged in ways which particularly appeal to children.

Following such early encouragement, a liking for excessive sweetness is taken into adulthood and it is clear that palates have completely changed over the past half-century.

For example, 'sports' drinks are very popular with the young -- another way of dressing up sugared water -- and fashionable alcoholic drinks are typically quite sweet nowadays.

Can anyone imagine their grandfather drinking raspberry flavoured vodka?

If I were in Sheila's influential position, I would be asking David Crausby to consider ways of reigning in these enormously powerful groups of people. Perhaps advertising restrictions or punitive taxes or even legal challenges similar to those waged against tobacco companies in the US.

Sheila's own vision sees such exploitation continuing unabated while the ordinary citizen is forced to cough up more money for the pollution of drinking water. A depressingly one-dimensional and dishonest approach.

John Morris

Coniston Road

Blackrod