People in the St James's Street area of Brighton say drug dealing is getting out of control with crack cocaine being traded openly on the street.

At least 50 people a year are dying from hard drugs in the city and experts estimate £1 million as week is spent on them.

Meanwhile in Hastings there was the sad case of 17-year-old Amy Pickard who has been in a drugs-induced coma since being found collapsed in a public lavatory five month ago.

Her boyfriend, 22-year-old Michael Morfee, has now just been found dead in the same lavatories and the death is thought to have been due to drugs.

One young life has ended and another ruined through addiction to drugs.

This sad couple epitomise how serious the problem is in this resort.

The drugs menace is at its worse in downtown areas of places such as Brighton and Hastings where poverty and deprivation are at their worst.

But there is also a problem even in picture postcard villages and small towns all over Sussex.

The worry among many residents is that they feel the police are not doing enough to tackle this scourge of modern society.

But Superintendent Graham Cox, who had a good record of clearing up crime in Hove, says in Brighton a lot of undercover work is being carried out.

He may be right, as every week people are appearing in local courts for dealing in drugs, many of them from London.

But a high profile approach by police is needed in places such as Hastings town centre and parts of Brighton to warn people that taking hard drugs and peddling them to vulnerable people simply cannot be tolerated.