THE recent news of a seven-year-old boy in Scotland taking his mother's heroin to school to prevent her taking it is, for me, the last straw in recognising that we as a society have become weak and cowardly when it comes to protecting our citizens, and particularly our children.

We are all guilty of supporting certain councillors and MPs who do nothing to stem the growing tide of death, pain and suffering. We convince ourselves that everything possible is being done, in order to make ourselves feel better.

What we are witnessing is the surrender of a once great nation that has become conditioned into believing that if you want to live in a free society you must accept that some people will, through weakness or sheer evil, abuse that freedom and that this is a price well worth paying.

I say the only freedoms you would not have, in the kind of society I would like to live in, would be the freedoms to spread the disease and filth which is taking over this land.

I think it was Freud that said that "the world was an evil place not because of those that do evil, but because of those that look on and do nothing."

S SMITH, St James Street, Burnley.

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