TWO stories in this week's Chronicle highlight the scourge of drugs that has become a chronic and now often barely noticed problem in Winchester and elsewhere.

We report on the moving memorial service for Ben O'Brien who died in the city centre on June 29. Ben was a much-loved local man and around 150 people celebrated his life at Hope Church just yards from where he died. Sadly it would appear that drugs got the better of him.

And we return to the issue of West View House, the ex-offenders hostel in Hyde, which is getting out of control. Local people have formed an action group to get its operator A2 Dominion to buck up their ideas and run the place properly. Most of the residents have drugs issues and a large number have become regular thieves targeting city centre shops. It needs to be made clear that West View House is not a homeless hostel, such as the Winchester Beacon nightshelter in Jewry Street. West View's residents are offenders who should be being helped on a path to rehabilitation. At the moment that laudable aim is failing dismally.

At the moment we are 15 years into the 'age of austerity' where central Government has clamped down on public spending, even if, ironically, tax levels are at their highest levels since the 1950s.

There was a time when more public money was being spent on tackling the root cause of addiction. It was an investment and the payback would have been reduced crime by drug addicts. In the noughties for a few years a service called Rupert's operated in Bridge Street, in the building that used to be Taylors greengrocers and latterly the Black Bottle wine bar. Ruperts was operated by the Trinity Centre and helped a number of drug addicts address their issues.

The coalition government decided public spending needed to be cut and the spin-off was that Ruperts closed. You can judge whether that was the right thing to do.