The Fight for Safer Communities

This year’s 24th annual National Night Out on August 7th  will bring together  more than 35 million citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and officials determined to forge safer communities.  

The evening’s neighborhood block parties, barbeques, exhibits and marches may not be hard-core crime fighting but they are certain to make an immediate impact on the vitality of every neighborhood, especially if education is given its pivotal role

Any law enforcement officer can provide first-hand accounts of the link between drugs and crime, but there are also compelling, if little known, statistics showing the correlation.  

 Take the rise in crime statistics since drugs were first popularized by music and mass media in the early 60s.  Since then, according to the recent US crime rates, violent crime has escalated by nearly 500%, assaults increased by 559%, rape by 546% and property crimes by more than 300%, but our population increase is only 75%.  

The war on drugs may have become a cliché but these statistics alone show we are in the midst of a seriously insidious epidemic that has yet to damp outToday, legal drugs are so commonplace that the new 2006 Monitoring the Future survey tells us that a full 48% of 12th graders have tried illicit drugs.  Prescription drug sales doubled between 1996 and 2000, and arrests and deaths from prescription drug abuse are more and more in the news.  A special report released in June this year by the Office of National Drug Control Policy shows a direct relationship between teen drug use and violence, finding that “the more drugs a teenager uses, the greater the tendency to engage in violent behavior.

While drugs may have crept into the very thread of our social structure while we were unaware, National Night Out is a powerful catalyst for uniting in the fight and getting smart about drugs.    For more than 20 years, members of the churches of Scientology have worked together with many community organizations to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs through the Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Life program, providing drug prevention booklets, fliers and lectures and they will be out in force again on National Night Out.  Ignorance is the friend of no one but the drug pushers and education is our greatest weapon.   It’s time for everyone to get smart about drugs. 

 

Editorial by 

 

Wendy Beccaccini

Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Life Coordinator
Church of Scientology International