[West Ender]

I don't live in Accrington any more so I won't presume to comment on your points referring to corruption. Neither do I know the background of the article on a drug-dealer you refer to but, having read your essay, I presume this person was your friend. A friend who, you say, was a good father. A good father who supplied substances to someone else's children, as long as he was well paid; substances that could ruin someone else's child's health and life and from the profits of which he could carry on being such a good father. Oh what twisted logic. What a perverse morality.

You say you have children and you feel a sense of responsibility. Does your responsibility extend to preventing your children from experimenting with drugs? Do you warn your children to stay away from the Karls of this world? Or do you say it's fine, Karl was my friend, he was just an average dealer, go ahead. You cite schoolgirls getting pregnant through lack of a decent father; a decent father who excuses a drug dealer on the grounds that he was "average". Your schoolgirl was just as likely to have become pregnant while under the influence of the drugs your friend sold to her.

You question why drug users prefer to be "under the influence" and proseletise the answer being that life "sucks". I disagree. They prefer the narcotic state because "average" dealers made a profit by introducing them to an addiction which they cannot break. Life "sucks" for many, many people who just grit their teeth and get on with it; people who have not had the misfortune to be weaned into a drug habit that saps their brains, their energy and their money; people for whom life "sucks" because they have been robbed, or worse, by the addicts who will do anything to finance their next fix from the "average" dealer you defend so heartily.