Drug prohibition is the most destabilizing domestic policy in America today. It is responsible for nearly 60% of our total crime, across the board. Repealing drug prohibition will see much of that crime disappear virtually overnight, with the rest taking months, not years. We should worry less about someone smoking marijuana or doing cocaine and focus more on what the American landscape will look like after such a massive and unprecedented reduction in crime. We will become the freest and safest and most prosperous people on the planet. And it will be nothing short of stunning.

America lived in peace with drugs for nearly a century, about the same length of time we have lived with them at war. When cocaine, opium and all its derivatives, including heroin, were cheap and readily available from corner drugstores and even Sears, Roebuck, and when we were actually encouraged to take these drugs, America had an addiction rate of less than 2%. And we had no drug crime. After 93 years of prohibition, with the last 40 or so being especially intense, our addiction rate remains unchanged. What has changed is that prohibition has created a brutally efficient and corrupting black market economy that is roughly equal to 8% of the world's gross domestic product. America has arrested over 20 million of her citizens for drug offenses, and in the process ruined the many lives of otherwise law-abiding individuals. Enough is enough.

Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 on a promise to restore law and order. Tapes from his Oval Office recording system make clear he was convinced the emerging counterculture, with it's use of recreational drugs and opposition to the Vietnam war, was the single-greatest threat to fulfilling his promise. So in 1970 he consolidated 50 years of drug legislation into one Controlled Substance Act, and declared his war on drugs. The simple truth is that Richard Nixon backed the wrong horse. Had he remained true to the Republican Party principles of limited government and personal responsibility, he would have ended prohibition and devised a system to regulate the sale and use of drugs. But he failed his party and America, and we have lived with the devastating consequences ever since.

History teaches it was religious arrogance and political opportunism, and not some outsized fear America was becoming an addict nation, that led to drug prohibition. But now the granddaddy bluff of all prohibitionists is that with repeal we will become a nation of addicts. They say keeping drugs illegal is our only hope, in fact, our only prayer, suggesting such laws are what stop over 98% of us from running out and shooting heroin or smoking cocaine. Such a premise is not only an affront to our collective common sense, it represents a direct threat to our common good. I firmly believe in law and order, but only for such law that brings order. Our current drug policy does everything but. Which is why I believe repealing drug prohibition will be the most significant law and order legislation of the 21st century.