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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

None of the countries that are doing far better than us have anywhere near the level of incarceration that we suffer.

Asian countries have far harsher punishments for drug offenses, and their societal outcomes are better than both America's or Europe's.

In most of Asia doing drugs (aside from the "normal" ones like alcohol and tobacco) is also considered something good people don't do.

Here (USA) billionaires microdose acid and take molly in the desert. The culture around drugs is entirely different.

Drug use was extremely prevalent in Asia's early modern history. They stamped it out with harsh enforcement.

Maybe the US will end up learning a similar lesson.

those billionaires should be in jail

Which Asian countries would you say are doing better than Finland and Norway?

While Singapore has a lot of things going for it I wouldn't really consider it more free than Norway, even if drug consumption is substantially restricted there.

The US is usually judged against the Scandinavian countries by comparing homicide rates, so use the same to compare Singapore to the Scandinavian countries and you'll see that Singapore does much better.

You could do the comparison using other crimes instead, but bodies are a more concrete metric. By the way, it's not just Singapore.

compare the murder rate of Nigeria (20) with Japan (0.2) and you begin to understand the nature of the challenges with law enforcement in the US

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