If so I'd have to dispute it. I do think the U.S. imprisons too many people for drug charges but I also think China and Russia have a lot of people imprisoned "off the books". Also keep in mind the statistics don't tell the whole story. We all know Russia doles out a lot of punishment via hit squad and China, who won't release their capital punishment numbers, admits to executing more people than any other country on earth (though not per capita thanks to Iran)
If China has fewer people in prison because the execute far more people than your argument isn't really a valid one
China executes at most a rounding error of the US prison population. 2005's high of 10,000 is less than half a percent of the current US prison population, and they would need to have been performing at that high for seventy years to hit the US population. Furthermore, they have a billion extra people! Nowhere close to the American rate(!) of imprisonment. (They'd need approximately five times as many their official imprisonment rate 'off the books' to equal US.)
If so I'd have to dispute it. I do think the U.S. imprisons too many people for drug charges but I also think China and Russia have a lot of people imprisoned "off the books". Also keep in mind the statistics don't tell the whole story. We all know Russia doles out a lot of punishment via hit squad and China, who won't release their capital punishment numbers, admits to executing more people than any other country on earth (though not per capita thanks to Iran)
If China has fewer people in prison because the execute far more people than your argument isn't really a valid one