WRITING about drugs, VJ Connor made the unfounded accusation that via The Northern Echo’s website I had expressed a desire to see all drug users and dealers executed (HAS, Feb 8).

I should like to make it absolutely clear that I have never expressed such a point of view nor, indeed, do I hold this opinion.

I did note the decision of an Indonesian court to sentence the British drug smuggler Lindsay Sandiford to death by firing squad and that such verdicts represent a much sterner attitude to the use and trafficking of drugs in other parts of the world.

DW Lacey, Durham.