Comment by 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.)