7 ways to make your neighborhood safer

by Harry Browne 10/22/00

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 e-mail, 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.

Benefits of re-legalizing 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.

Re-legalizing 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 didn't Jim Lehrer make Al Gore or George Bush explain their 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.

That's why I have made this promise: If I am somehow elected president, from the inauguration platform I will issue an unconditional pardon to everyone in a federal prison on a non-violent drug offense.

When you vote this year, realize that by voting for George Bush or Al Gore, you are voting to endorse the insane war on drugs. Only by voting Libertarian will you issue an unmistakable statement that you want America to be a free country again.