Contrary to claims that U.S. prisons are teeming with people who have committed no crime but using drugs, a 2005 paper in the journal Contemporary Drug Problems found that 85% to 98% of people in prison for drug use had plea bargained down from a more serious crime. Thus, the study estimated that "0.5% to 3.6% of all prison inmates" were incarcerated "solely for their drug use." Similar results were found by a study published by the journal Criminology & Public Policy in 2006. Since then, numerous laws have legalized marijuana, reduced drug crime prison terms, decriminalized drug possession, and provided more government support for drug treatment. Despite predictions that such actions would save lives, the drug overdose death rate has quintupled since 1999. During 2021, roughly 83,034 people in the U.S. were killed by accidental overdoses from illicit drugs, mainly smuggled from Mexico.