7 Ways to Make Your Neighborhood Safer

[Erica]

7 Ways to Make Your Neighborhood Safer
by Harry Browne
America's crime rate has risen almost continually
for the past 35 years. Very little of the great
plans to reverse the trend -- whether mandatory
sentences or more cops on the beat -- has helped
to relieve the worst crime wave in the nation's
history. And recent drops in crime rates still
leave us far less safe than we were 35 years ago.

Is the situation hopeless?

No. America could be much safer -- quickly and
dramatically safer.

Cutting Crime

Here are seven ways to bring peace and security to
your neighborhood. . .

1. End the War on Drugs -- to release from prison
the marijuana smokers and other non-violent drug
offenders serving 15-year and 50-year sentences.
They fill up the prisons -- allowing the
murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals to
go free on early release or plea-bargains, free to
terrorize your neighborhood.

2. End the War on Drugs -- to free up
law-enforcement resources to fight violent crime,
instead of chasing people who may harm themselves
but are no threat to us.

3. End the War on Drugs -- to end gang warfare.
The Drug War has taken the drug business away from
pharmaceutical companies and turned it over to
gangs operating in a huge black market, providing
untold riches for anyone who will flout the law.
This money finances criminal gangs who would be
powerless without drug money. Legal drug, tobacco,
or alcohol companies don't conduct gang warfare
and drive-by shootings, but criminal gangs will do
anything to secure a rich monopoly territory.

4. End the War on Drugs -- to reduce police
corruption. With so much black-market money and
confiscated drugs floating around, it's too easy
for weak policemen to become rich by breaking the
law themselves.

5. End the War on Drugs -- to make our schools
safer. Brewers and distillers don't recruit
children to run drugs or hook other kids on
liquor; nor do they give them guns to take to
school. Neither would legal drug companies. Before
the War on Drugs, the worst schools in Los Angeles
were safer than L.A.'s best schools are today.

6. End the War on Drugs -- to end muggings and
burglaries by addicts. If Prohibition were ended,
illegal drugs selling today for $100 might cost as
little as $2, because legal competition -- with no
need to circumvent the law -- would drive drug
prices down. So addicts would no longer need to
steal to support their habits.

7. End the War on Drugs -- to bring back respect
for decent behavior. Because nothing can win the
Drug War, it is constantly escalated -- destroying
more of your liberties with asset forfeiture laws,
drug-testing, snooping in your bank account,
monitoring your email, racial profiling, and other
invasions of the liberty of all Americans. This
has caused too many people to disrespect the law
itself -- feeling that any kind of law-breaking,
victimless or violent, is justified.

The Benefits of Relegalizing Drugs

If you want your city, your country, and your
children to be safe, we must end the insane War on
Drugs before it destroys us.

Understandably, many Americans fear that ending
the Drug War would produce hundreds of thousands
of addicts, crack babies, children trying drugs,
and other evils. _But that's what we have now_.

Relegalizing drugs would eliminate the criminal
black market -- ending the violence, the incentive
to hook children, and the selling of bad drugs
that destroy people. And addicts could seek
medical help openly and inexpensively -- instead
of hiding their habits from the law.

Why this War?

Despite the tyrannical methods the government uses
to fight the Drug War, drug use continues
unabated. So why do politicians fight so
desperately to continue this insane War on Drugs?

Could it be because the War allows them to
continually expand their power over our property,
our bank accounts, and our private lives?

And why won't the national media and the
"investigative" reporters challenge the prevailing
wisdom? Why hasn't Jim Lehrer made Al Gore or
George Bush explain his support for continuing
this relentless and futile war?

Wouldn't it have been nice to have one person on
the debate stage to ask Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush the
obvious question:

"Would you be a better person today if, for
your youthful drug use, you had spent 10 years
in prison?"

Republicans and Democratic politicians see nothing
hypocritical in prosecuting others for actions
they've taken themselves. They've operated for so
long on a double standard that it never occurs to
them that they comprise anything less than an
elite aristocracy.

A Better America

Libertarians know how much safer America will be
without the nightmare of Prohibition -- just as
America became safer the moment alcohol
Prohibition ended. Libertarians also recognize
that the War on Drugs is an excuse for politicians
to make big government bigger. And Libertarians
know that oppressive prison sentences for drug use
and peaceful dealing have not made America safer.