i'm honestly unaware of places without drug users, so honest question : did you move away from drug users, or did you move away from users of a specific drug?
The only way I can fathom that someone may be truly away from drug users is that they're also totally away from populations of any kind.
Antarctica comes to mind, but i'd probably be surprised.
I say that unironically. I don't care what my neighbours do in the privacy of their own home, as long as it doesn't affect me. (Eg as long as tobacco or pot smoke doesn't waft over to me.)
Health-wise backyard campfires and BBQ are probably no better (or worse) than burning tobacco or pot.
Many places already restrict backyard campfires and similar. See eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/17/wood-bur...
To expand a bit on my original comment:
> I don't care what my neighbours do in the privacy of their own home, as long as it doesn't affect me.
So I might care about them doing a backyard campfire. If it's both legal and long-standing custom in that neighbourhood, I might just not move there in the first place. If it's illegal and I already live there when they start, I might object.
When someone says there is a lot of drug activity in a neighborhood, they’re not saying that people are quietly consuming an edible in their basement every once in a while. Problematic drug use seeps into many aspects of social life.
And before anyone assumes that I’m referring to poor neighborhoods, I’m not. One of the most problematic and dangerous drug environments I ever witnessed (in my relatively sheltered life) involved some very well-off young people who got caught up in drugs, then dealing drugs, and then severe addiction that interferes with their judgment to the point that they were getting violent and threatening murder. This was in a well-off community where a number of families ultimately chose to move away to escape the parts of the community with a drug problem and had no regrets for doing so.
I’ve also crossed less dramatic situations where social groups went downhill due to less overt drug use: People who start using unnecessarily high non-therapeutic doses of Adderall to become energized (doesn’t last, causes weird problems over time), people who start using benzos with casual disregard (turns into a dependency very quickly), and even people who casually use opioids for recreation as if it’s a sustainable activity. In each case, the effects of excessive drug use start taking a toll on the person that extends to the social group. Getting away can be like a breath of fresh air.
I'd like pot smokers to stay away from my neighbourhood, just like smokers of any other kind. But that's just because of the smell. If they want to eat their cannabis or vape their tobacco etc, I don't mind.
I even mind dryer scents; literally ANY unusual smell in the air. Unusually pungent foods, camp fire and BBQ smoke, any cleaning agents. IMO every house should have scrubbed exhausts and possibly also intakes.
> IMO every house should have scrubbed exhausts and possibly also intakes.
You might find the Coase Therom interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem