The solution to the decline of America is not to contain the underclass--the solution is to give them opportunity. They, like ever more people in America, need hope. Give them chances and they can easily become the Harvard students of tomorrow. Hope does not come from speeches and advertising campaigns. It does not arise from rap and heavy metal music. People are more practical than that.

IHAVE A FEW suggestions, pragmatic ones, that can restore hope for the underclass, if not give every possible option to eliminate such a status. It will also prevent more of middle America from being consumed by the same tragedy.

Legalize drugs. At this point conservatives have stopped reading. They believe that drugs will permit society to become a hoard of junkies. The economy would supposedly collapse because no one would show up to work.

But the fact is that the drug situation is more analogous to alcohol and Prohibition than any kind of cultureravaging force than Dan Quayle imagines. The market for drugs might expand if it were legalized, but at some point it would stabilize--just as many people are casual users or adverse to alcohol, we can expect a similar reaction to drugs. Some people just won't like the taste, smell or health hazards of the stuff and others will be too conservative with their money to splurge on such perks.

We do not currently realize that if someone wants drugs today, they can get them. But the fact that they are illegal makes the price artificially skyrocket. The bottom line: Legalization will cause a small increase in drug usage and a huge drop in prices. The lower price is the key reason for legalizing drugs. At that point, gang warfare becomes senseless. Why fight over something that now pays us $25 that used to net us $2000? And where do dealers get the big weaponry without the heavy cash flow? Nowhere.

Drug usage is not a solution by any measure; but since we cannot seem to stop millions from using them, we might as well shed the destructive side-effects of murder and robbery by not making it financially worthwhile to do so.

It is not unreasonable to believe that if drugs were legalized, people who stole and murdered for crack money in the past would now buy it with pay from a regular job. Teens would no longer need to cheat their employers and do favors for dealers in order to smoke marijuana like other people drink Jack Daniels.

Of course, like alcohol, drugs need to be regulated--to ensure purity (fewer ODs from bad dope), to prohibit driving under the influence and to allow employers to fire and suspend those who come to work high. Education about drugs needs to be as pervasive as it is about smoking, sex and drinking. Also consider the fact that a sales tax on drugs could make millions for the government just as we would save the millions that now go toward waging a useless drug war.

We must realize that poverty is not entirely racial. When many people hear ghetto, they think "Good Times." The face of the ghetto has substantial numbers of Blacks, but every race shares the problem. Whites, Blacks, Asians-every group is represented. For example, 66 percent of the people on welfare are white single mothers. The media has actually done well in recent years to show the Black individuals are complete and important citizens of America, and that white people are completely capable of being useless.

Reform welfare. Confident single mothers can be terrific parents. Unfortunately, there are as many irresponsible single mother households as there are incompetent two-parent households. Not surprisingly, many single mothers are young and unskilled.

Single mothers do some simple math and realize that they can make more money by not working and having more children instead of by having a minimum wage job. We pay them to have children.

I suggest that the government subsidize major industry with money currently spent on welfare so that they can hire healthy welfare recipients who want to work and pay them livable wages. Also, penalize welfare dependents who become pregnant after they join the system--in essence permitting a woman who joins welfare with a family of four to adequately provide for her group, but penalizing her should she increase the size of the initial family. This is not reproductive Stalinism--it is simply a method by which we ensure that fewer children are born into the mire of poverty by selfish mothers.

AMERICA IS STILL declining. The ghetto is merely a burgeoning symbol of the many problems consuming the entire country. If we can begin with the people who need help immediately, perhaps then we can apply the solution to middle America, which has only begin to feel the itchings of the decline. Otherwise, they may experience something much more painful and widespread, and much sooner than they can imagine.