Should the USA reduce the prison sentences for drug, and nonviolent crimes?

My personal opinion is that all victimless crimes should not be considered crimes, including all drug charges.

Considering most of the sentencing laws for drug offenses were blatantly racist, yes.

And, for the most part I agree with @Mariah.

But in the case of a really bad drug problem (including alcohol,) how often is the crime not victimless?

@Mariah What do you mean by victimless crimes?

@Dutchess_III Tell me what is “a really bad drug problem” in which the side effects of drug abuse are not covered by other criminal provisions?

@Sneki95 Sex work by those above the age of majority that are not coerced is victimless. Private recreational use of drugs is victimless.

America has one of the largest prison populations of the 1st world countries

Not one of the largest.

THE largest. Nobody else is in the same league. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners.

Here is the US compared to the G20.
(Prisoners per 100,000 population)
693 United States of America
450 Russian Federation
307 Brazil
292 South Africa
238 Turkey
204 Mexico
161 Saudi Arabia
160 Argentina
152 Australia
146 United Kingdom: England & Wales
118 China
114 Canada
113 EU (overall)
107 Republic of (South) Korea
103 France
89 Italy
78 Germany
69 Indonesia
47 Japan
33 India

List of countries by incarceration rate

@Sneki95, @zenvelo summed it up pretty well. Doing things that does not hurt others should not be illegal. There are downstream effects that could hurt others – such as drunk driving – those things of course should stay illegal. The act of taking the drug in the first place is not evil or wrong though.

@Mariah But won’t that make drugs more accessible to people? If anyone can use drugs without consequences, would that not make a plague of drug addicts?

Alcohol is a freely available drug. Yes, it causes problems, but society manages it.

Prohibition causes more problems than drug use. The US made booze illegal from 1920 to 1932 and we got the gangster era. Drug prohibition is much, much worse.

Mexico has a murder rate 4 times worse than the US, mostly because of gangs fighting over American drug money.

What he said. I’m not super hardcore about this belief except as it applies to essentially harmless drugs like marijuana that sooo many people are in jail for.

Yes.

Oh also, I’m not saying the state has to manufacture and sell all drugs, so maybe availability wouldn’t increase. It’d just be cool if people would stop being thrown in jail for being addicts, a medical problem.

It’s hard to imagine drugs being more accessible… I don’t use any illicit drugs at all, but if I wanted to I know where to get them.

The hardest drugs to come by are legal pain medication for legitimate chronic pain patients.

You’d be surprised the number of people I know who turned to heroin at least once because they couldn’t find a pharmacy willing to fill their prescription.

Anti-drug laws cause drug abuse and create criminals far more than they deter them.

Well. I didn’t say we should legalize all drugs. BUT I think that would stop lots of violence.

Most gang violence is over street corners used for selling illegal drugs. And as mentioned above, Mexican cartels have been killing each other over the routes used to smuggle the drugs in to the US.

If all drugs were legal, I think lots of violent crime rates would plummet overnight.

Nine states are voting on marijuana legalization of some sort today. California is voting for full legalization, after years of medical marijuana.

The paper had an article last week that pot in California is so good it is being smuggled into Mexico.

^Yes. I read an article the other day that said US weed now outnumbered Mexico weed as far as international smuggling.

We’re exporting more than we’re importing.