Almost all of the drug users I know are highly motivated and very successful people. Even if you include illegal drugs.
Perhaps this is just selection bias at work, but that knife cuts both ways.
It's definitely selection bias.
I too lived in an urban/cool area with 'pro' drug users and (mostly) never saw a problem, though there was one accidental OD in my circle.
But get out into the real world, working class areas where meth and crack in particular have laid waste - it's another story.
Rural areas, working class areas, ghettos - another story - and I think they represent the 'majority' of users by far.
In fact - I think that this bias is the #1 contributor to the misinformation about 'the war on drugs'.
As I stated in another thread, the "all drug users are lazy" mythos is also a form of selection bias. The only difference is that my selection bias isn't being used as a justification for jailing people. I think that's an important difference.
> Rural areas, working class areas, ghettos - another story - and I think they represent the 'majority' of users by far.
We see similar harms from excessive tobacco and alcohol abuse in those communities, but we don't outlaw those drugs.
So, why do we draw the arbitrary line where we do?
And how, exactly, does jailing these people actually help anything?
Basically, I don't take this argument seriously unless the person advocating it is in favor of marijuana legalization or else supports alcohol prohibition.
There isn't just the selection bias of people you tend to know potentially not being representative of most drug users, but the need for comparing how those same drug users would do without drugs (I'm not sure how this is possible to evaluate). It isn't enough to say that some drug users are highly motivated and successful, which I don't contest.
If they were enjoying a light marijuana buzz (or a light alcohol/caffeine buzz!!!) during work hours -- or in a way that directly and visibly effects their work performance -- you might have a point.
But even in those cases, I would still strongly disagree with your rationale. The same line of reasoning also justifies jailing people for obesity, which "Has Been Known To Significantly Decrease Productivity". And it certainly justifies jailing people who drink alcohol, since even mild hang-overs have rather extreme effects on productivity. If you're too over-weight or hung-over or high to work, then you should be fired. Not jailed.
But justifying a law on the basis that individuals should organize their private life choices such that they are optimally productive as members of society? That's quite the burden, and if we're going to impose that burden, I suspect we'd have a compelling justification for jailing literally anyone.
Conversely, all of the drug users I know are employed and earn between 1x and 3x the national average household income. At jobs where they're highly respected for their contributions.
Again, maybe that's just anecdote. But the "anecdote" criticism cuts both ways. The only real difference is that I'm not justifying jailing people on the basis of personal anecdote.
You're saying that by sampling opinions that are formed in small neighborhoods around voters, we can get a picture of ground truth -- even if reality is distorted in various ways around those small neighborhoods.
This can work, but not in the case where there's something masking a portion of the data set such that personal anecdote isn't indicative of underlying reality, even locally.
In that case, anecdotes aren't even locally accurate, and that effect amortizes over the voting population to result in a globally inaccurate picture of reality.
Which is the case here. Criminalizing and stigmatizing drugs means that grandma doesn't necessarily know successful son-in-law smokes pot on the weekend, for example.