“nonviolent drug crimes”
The violence is committed by the customers of the drug dealers.
The drug crimes are not non-violent.
Crime is an inevitable consequence of making the sale of recreational/addictive drug substances illegal. Drug prohibition make the substances expensive.
There is also the problem of shoplifting by customers of drug dealers. This shoplifting causes inner city retailers to have to raise their prices.
Crime is the inevitable result of taking many inebriation substances.
The only people who don’t understand that are people to mentally incapable of remembering the PCP crime wave of my youth, or people too damned stupid to look up events of the past.
There are, of course, people who are evil and dishonest. Many of those try to gloss that part of intoxication over.
That covers every possibility.