THE trouble with Eric Leaver (LET, October 11) is that he's too young.

I was just finishing University -- in Birmingham -- as Jack Straw was starting in Leeds. Not once, during the three years I spent there, was I offered drugs.

Nor did I know of anyone else who had, let alone anyone who had used them. They were just not part of the scene.

They may well have been in Oxford or Cambridge, which is where the Tory hierarchy probably were, but not in Birmingham, as I know, or in Leeds, as Jack Straw knows.

I have no axe to grind in siding with Jack Straw, but the difference between our view and Eric Leaver's is that we were there.

DAVID AINSWORTH, Earnsdale Road, Darwen.