There was no attempt to deceive the public - police and Butler County District Attorney Timothy McCune didn't attempt to hide the fact that most of those arrested in Wednesday's drug bust were low- to mid-level street dealers.

People fed up with the county's drug problem would have been happier if high-level suppliers and drug sources also were among those apprehended, which would have provided hope that a significant dent had been made in the illegal-drug supply coming into the county.

Unfortunately, that kind of outcome apparently will have to wait until another day.

Hopefully that day will be forthcoming.

What alone can be surmised from last week's bust is that - at least temporarily - drug suppliers aren't going to feel as comfortable doing business here as they have been over the past several years, when anti-drug assaults of the magnitude of Wednesday's were conspicuously absent. Unless there are significant follow-up actions that continue to tighten the noose around the county's illegal drug trade, law-abiding residents will have legitimate grounds for disappointment, rather than optimism, despite what took place last week.

Wednesday's arrests by themselves didn't prove that authorities are fully committed to ridding the streets of illegal drugs. A continuing, unrelenting crackdown against illegal-drug sales and use - and arrests to provide evidence of that crackdown - is the only avenue to gaining the public's confidence that all possible is being done.

One bust of Wednesday's size is merely an appetizer; drug investigators shouldn't rest until they have provided a "main course."

Officials said Wednesday's bust was the result of a six-month investigation, which raises the obvious question of why the district attorney's drug task force and other police investigators, over the past four years at least, have had such an unimpressive record in regard to large-scale illegal-drug arrests, outside the parameters of that six-month probe.

Many Butler area residents lament how illegal drugs have infiltrated their community. They are troubled by reports of fatal and non-fatal drug overdoses and how drug dealing has taken place in the vicinity of schools and playgrounds.

Law-abiding residents of the Island neighborhood, for example, are troubled by what they believe is drug dealing in plain view on weekend nights near their residences.

They long have pondered why police haven't noticed - or why there hasn't been stepped-up city police visibility as a deterrent to that activity.

Wednesday's arrest of at least 18 suspects believed tied to the county's drug-supply scene, while a source of optimism, is not a source of comfort. While an inroad, the arrests merely scratched the surface of the county's increasingly troubling illegal-drug morass that is exacting a toll on young people as well as adults.

Officials on Wednesday didn't attempt to fool the public about the importance of that day's arrests, but neither did they provide optimistic assurance that more big assaults on the drug scene would be forthcoming anytime soon.

The less-than-laudable record of the past several years leading up to Wednesday must not be repeated in the months and years to come.