Care to wager on the fraction of US users of illegal drugs?
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230209_1102...
> In 2021, findings by NCDAS show about 19.4 percent of Americans have used illegal substances at least once. Out of the 280 million aged 12 and older, 31.9 million are drug users, with 11.7 percent on illegal substances and 19.4 percent either having consumed illicit drugs or misused prescription drugs in 2020. If alcohol and tobacco users are included, the number of people in the United States who are abusing substances totals 165 million.
> During the past 12 months, 48.2 million Americans over the age of 18 consumed cannabis at least once.
> During the past 12 months, 10.1 million Americans have consumed opium at least once.
Opium is at 3.3% by your number, which is comparable to the numbers I showed on Thailand.
We can both cherry pick data but USA has tried prohibition of various substances for over 100 years. Prohibition by itself caused more problems than it solved.
Interesting that two very different national legal policies have such similar outcomes among Asians.
Phillipines has experimented with allowing anyone to murder anyone else they suspect of using drugs. That hasn’t significantly decreased the rate of illegal drug use in the country. This is despite making payments to people to summarily execute drug addicts. Thousands have been executed across the Phillipines. I can’t find any evidence that drug use in the Philippines has decreased in the past 5 years.