[otikik]

Some other countries don’t consider possession of a minor amount of drugs, clearly intended for personal use, “a drug crime”. Of course your numbers will be higher than others, if you count things differently.

Treat addiction like an illness, not a crime, and your numbers will fall in line with the rest of the countries, quickly. Moreso if you get rid of those for-profit prison system while you are at it.

[ahh]

I think you're misinterpreting GP: even though it is true that possession-like crimes are badly handled by the US, you can erase them entirely and the US _still_ has a larger prison population. Our population commits more real crimes than most first-world countries. Treating addiction like an illness seems nice, but will not stop that. We either must imprison them (which don't do _enough_) or convince them not to commit crimes (which actually prosecuting crimes _might_ help with, and very little else we've tried does.)