> The great majority of persons in the United States who are in prison are in prison for offenses other than drug offenses. I had a quick look for information

> The great majority of persons in the United States who are in prison are in prison for offenses other than drug offenses. I had a quick look for information about this. The first source I found (chosen to avoid introducing bias through cherry-picking) was this one: http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p11.pdf http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p11.pdf and it says: "Nearly half (48%) of inmates in federal prison were serving time for drug offenses in 2011". So it turns out that both this and tokenadult's statement are correct -- because the great majority of prisoners in the US are state prisoners rather than federal ones. About 17% of state prisoners are doing time for drug offences.