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The difference between users and dealers is mostly in the imagination of middle-class people.

The Wire[0] is a very interesting portrait into the challenges involved in managing drug crime in a city. I'm not a cop so I can't say how far the realism extends, but the show seems to try pretty hard to be grounded in reality as opposed to – say – CSI.

[0] https://www.hbo.com/the-wire

The Wire was written by David Simon, a Baltimore journalist who wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (made into a TV show named Homicide before The Wire) after embedding with the police for a year. It's basically the magnum opus of crime documentary from that era. The Wire is fiction but draws strongly from that work. I don't know how his experiences influenced him, but David Simon's politics are extremely left wing these days so make of that what you will.

Read the book San Fransicko.

The policy makers are bonkers.