Imagine an America where you can stroll through any neighborhood, at any time, and feel safe making a new friend with each person you meet.
An America where property crime is down by 90%.
An America where a home invasion so rare, that people have almost forgotten about it.
An America that has reduced by more than half Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). NAS is babies born addicted to opiates.
An America where the police can walk through the community smiling with citizens and occasionally being asked to look in on this family or another because they are going through a rough time and the calming hand of a respected officer goes a long way toward making people believe there is an effective way to get back on track.
An America where 250 Americans didn’t die today of an overdose. Where almost no one dies of an overdose.
An America where families can stay together while working through an addiction that affects their brother, sister, mom, or dad.
An America where there is no black market for drugs because there are no clients willing to buy illicit drugs that haven’t been tested for purity or potency.
An America with courtrooms where citizens know they can go to get fair treatment because judges have ample time to devote to each case.
An American that never has to build a new prison.
I’m imagining an America where I would move my entire family as fast as we could pack.
An America surrounded by sound democratic neighboring countries whose governments haven’t been corrupted by the gigantic amount of money and drugs going back and forth to America.
An America where addicts can choose from a number of successful treatment programs that just didn’t work before.
We can have all of this quickly with little effort and we will save massive amounts of money doing it.
The only hard part is that we must change our minds about how we deal with addiction.
Changing minds can be difficult. Winston Churchill said that you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing . . . right after they’ve tried everything else. He also said that people who never change their mind, never change anything. Pretty profound for a politician who was only half American.