Does drug use and poor financial decisions, regardless of age, context, and scale, make you a fundamentally bad police officer? I'm not sure that's a bandwagon I can blindly jump on.
Extorting people for money is also bad, and I hope that the extortionists don't get paid, and just release this shit. Police misconduct is the worst sort of misconduct.
We've had multiple recent presidents and vice presidents who have used illegal drugs.
That seems far more "beyond the pale" because the president has more power than anyone to ending the drug war
We also do not know if the officers that did drugs also locked up people for doing drugs. There are police officers that try to be lenient and use discretion.
A risk to everyone you have poor judgment.
Risk to authority as you are vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors.
If anything, that this stuff is on the background check makes me feel more comfortable. It means that whatever happened has been owned up to which makes you somewhat difficult to blackmail.