Leader: There is an undoubted air of gloom around the Capital's shops this Christmas

There is an undoubted air of gloom around Edinburgh's main shopping streets, as a difficult year ends with further unwanted bad news.

As we report today, just when retailers should be enjoying their busiest time of the year, seven shopping days before Christmas, they are instead counting the cost of a serious downturn.

The latest figures suggest 400,000 fewer customers hit city centre shops in the first couple of weeks of this month compared with the same time last year.

That's a fall of more than ten per cent, a huge drop in the number of people not only spending cash on gifts and other items, but also on other businesses, from coffee shops and pubs to taxis.

The footfall decline is being put down to awful winter conditions which made it not just difficult but sometimes impossible for shoppers to get into town.

That devastating blow compounded long-term problems with attracting customers due to rising unemployment and tighter credit - and that was before any impact was felt from the cash-strapped council's decision to do away with free festive parking.

None of this is what retailers, big or small, wanted to hear. And the city's whole shopping sector is hoping that the next week will see a mini-boom, as many of us make up for lost time.

On the plus side most of them are reacting with customary energy and initiative, with offers to entice shoppers into their stores - and that means bargains for canny, last-minute Christmas shoppers.

Just say no

The discovery of a record haul of heroin at an Edinburgh house comes at an interesting time in the debate on drugs.

Yesterday ex-Home Office minister Bob Ainsworth put his head above the parapet to call for them all to be legalised, It is understandable that even he has become frustrated at our inability to prevent more and more people getting hooked on drugs, but legalisation is not the answer.

That would legitimise as well as legalise hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, which would not stop being killers and the harbingers of despair. Meanwhile the state would effectively become a drug dealer, in competition with those who continue to push illegal supplies.

Like opposing the death penalty, sometimes society has to take a moral stance, however compelling the arguments in favour of an alternative course of action. Meanwhile, we must keep showing our kids why they should reject drugs - and back our police in their battle against the scum dealers.