The latest warning from drugs counsellors in Bradford that children as young as 12 are using hard drugs supplied by teenage dealers is shocking and depressing. It suggests that the considerable effort and money which has been invested in recent years in warning youngsters against becoming involved with the drugs scene is no match for the peer pressure which can so easily lead them astray.

These are people still years away from adulthood who are by-passing the usual "soft drugs first" route and plunging straight into the twilight world of heroin addiction. Even before their teens are upon them, they are becoming caught up in the awful spiral that will ruin their educational and career prospects and saddle them with health problems which will plague them for years if they don't kill them.

They will steal to fund their habit as their minds rapidly become focused on the one thing that remains of importance to them. Their families will be placed under intolerable stress. They could end up on the streets, as vagrants or prostitutes or both.

All that is well enough known now, surely. There can be no child in the country who is not aware that hard drugs are very bad news. Yet still they allow themselves to be tempted to try them, with quick addiction being an almost certain consequence.

It is good that the Bridge Project and other services have developed the expertise to help those youngsters who are truly determined to beat their habit. What remains tragically elusive, though, is the way to persuade them not to risk getting ensnared by it in the first place.