A coroner voiced despair at talk of a tolerance towards drugs after hearing how two young lives were wiped out by heroin.

Alan Craze made his passionate summing-up speech at the end of inquests into the deaths of heroin addict Michael Morfee and his daughter Summer Louise Pickard.

Summer Louise died two days after being born by emergency Caesarean section while her teenage mother, Amy Pickard, lay in a heroin-induced coma.

Amy, 17, has been comatose since being found slumped unconscious with her lover Mr Morfee, 22, following a heroin overdose in a men's public toilets last June.

Tormented by the death of Summer Louise and the plight of Amy, Mr Morfee, of Malvern Way, Hastings, returned to the same toilets five months later and took a fatal heroin overdose.

Breaking away from summing up, Mr Craze said: "How can anyone listening to the cases today seriously advocate the use of drugs by young and immature people should be facilitated, whether by changing the law, by so-called tolerance policing or by any other means?"

Summer Louise died at the Conquest Hospital, Hastings, on June 9 last year. She had suffered brain damage after being born at seven months weighing just 2.05kg.

Consultant neo-natal paediatrician Dr Bhaudeep said: "Summer Louise's condition would have been indirectly related to her mother's as the drugs would have passed through her."

The inquest heard Mr Morfee, of Malvern Way, Hastings, had taken a huge dose of heroin.

Mr Craze recorded a verdict of misadventure for Summer Louise's death and an open verdict for Mr Morfee.