America's the most free country on the planet. If someone wants to speed or OD and die, that's their choice. I would rather have that than someone else prescribe what I can and cannot do with my life.
Frequent public votes on literally any topic you gather 100k signatures including such heavyweight topics like joining EU or NATO, or banning new mosques construction. You will never see such direct democracy in US, and you need very specific educated responsible moral population for it to work long term, or you get Brexit even with otherwise pretty decent and smart British folks.
0 opioid crysis, 0 gun violence, no obesity crisis to speak of, free very good quality public schools (to the point that nobody wants to pay for private schools if its not part of their corporate benefits) all the way up to top notch universities. Cca free absolute top notch medical system. Government that aint so darn clearly in big corporate pockets. They never criminalized drug addicts/consumers. I could go on for a long, long time. A lot of actual serious freedom in each above.
Not bashing US, its a great place for certain people and certain age, but hell would freeze sooner than I would move to US to ie raise kids or grow old. Land of free is mostly just politician's phrase, the bar ain't some dysfunctional 3rd world dictatorship, most of the world lives in pretty decent freedom.
That's an odd take, given the USA imprisons more people for longer for doing those things any of the other countries listed. The difference is not small. The USA has 0.5% of their population in jail, Australia 0.15%. The USA has the death penality, Australia doesn't. The USA's drug laws are in practice the most punitive of all the countries listed. So when it comes to OD'ing, the situation appears to be the reverse of what you said: a USA citizens have the least freedoms.
If you read the article you will see the other countries don't achieve the health by restricting freedoms. For example, there isn't a significant difference between Australia's & the USA's laws on speeding. Australia reduced speeding accidents by adding roundabouts. All adults are allowed to smoke in Australia - but it's very expensive. Assisting someone to die in Australia can be legal, it isn't in most of the USA.
These individual freedoms you think you have in the USA are mostly a myth. The rest of the world looks at USA preventing a woman from making an individual choice about abortion and then in the next breath claims the USA is the worlds leader in individual rights, and scratches their head.
I'd recommend digging into this topic a little bit to find out that it's not as simple as that. It's not that these people partied too hard. Every overdose is a sad story that could have and should have been prevented.
I think it was Franklin who is quoted to have said "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
While I've always resonated personally with this quote and how it relates to what I consider a fundamental principle we should strive to achieve/maintain, I recall there being some debate about the 'etymology' of the quote itself.