And yet, there are plenty of Asian countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, etc) where drug laws are much stricter than the US's, there are very few drug addicts, and there is very little crime.
But these asian countries and the european ones do have a number of things in common which is different from the US. Neither has poverty problems on the scale found in the US. Neither have racial conflict at the level found in the US.
And how comparable is really Singapore? It is a single city, tightly controlled with 3x the police force of a regular western country, where they practice DDR like surveillance in the sense that citizens are taught to report each other for all sorts of minor transgressions.
The US is a lot more similar to Europe so if one was ever too look at alternative policies I think looking at European experiences makes a lot more sense for the US than looking at Asian countries which are vastly different historically, culturally and in what political system they currently employ.
This is a dubious claim. How do you actually identify the number of people who are addicted? Even if there are fewer people addicted to the very few currently illegal drugs, are there fewer people addicted altogether?
It is worth noting that Indonesia have changed their drug policies in recent years and are moving towards a medicalised rather than criminalised approach to drug use, largely as a response to rising rates of HIV infection amongst injecting drug users.
https://www.unodc.org/indonesia/en/issues/hiv-and-drugs.html
I believe that more significant influencing factors are that drug usage is socially unacceptable Singapore and Indonesia, that citizens are more willing to accept government control over their private activities, that drugs are harder to acquire.
It seems more likely that those countries are able to have capital punishment for (what the West would consider to be) minor drugs offences precisely _because_ drug use is already low and drug users are more consistently vilified by society.
Quote from the article we're discussing.
I'm not convinced on Indonesia[1] and Hong Kong[2]; I've visited both myself several times, and drugs were easily available.
[1] http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/bnn-says-33-die-of-d... [2] http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1826366/...
Singapore only executes drug dealers, producers and traffickers. This hasn't really had a significant effect on drug availability, and it still remains a major transit point for drug trafficking in Asia.
Indonesia? Drugs everywhere.
It's probably very underreported (because otherwise they would be executing a ton of people).