Bradford might or might not be the "heroin capital of the country", as was claimed by Judge John Cockroft in the Crown Court. The title is irrelevant. Heroin is the stuff of nightmares, not of league tables.

What is important is that Judge Cockroft was right when he said that heroin is extensively available in the city and is causing huge problems - just as it causes huge problems in just about every city, town and village in Britain. It is the scourge of the younger generation.

In the wake of Judge Cockroft pinning the loser's medal on Bradford, the co-ordinator of Bradford's Drugs and Alcohol Action Team, one of the agencies involved in a three-year initiative to tackle drugs and drug-related crime, has pointed out that it is by no means the worst-affected area in the North.

That might be the case, but it is bad enough. Statistics from the Bradford-based Bridge Project show that, despite the anti-drugs initiative, the same number of addicts are being seen each week as 18 months ago - a depressingly high 400.

It could perhaps be taken as an encouraging sign that those numbers have not gone up. Efforts since the three-year Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy was launched might have stemmed the tide, but it has yet to be reversed.

A concerted, sustained campaign is needed to combat the evils of the drugs trade. Judge Cockroft himself made a useful contribution to it by jailing dealer Mohammed Yaqoob for eight years. Sentences like that, and longer, are needed if the war is to stand any chance of being won.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.