Most the folks I know are productive stoners. They get up in the morning, go to work, work hard, cash their paychecks, pay the bills, and are happy to just to smoke a little in the evening while watching TV before bed. I know a couple lazy ass stoners, too. They can't keep a job, cycle through 4 - 6 employers a year, when they are trying to keep a job. It really comes down to the same argument as guns. Marijuana in itself is not dangerous or does not make one lazy. It comes down to the person smoking.
Some people are literally born to be alcoholics. To find out if this was the case, scientists put people who they had no history on into PET scanners. (Positron Emission Tomography.) They injected a drop of alcohol into a vein and if they were alcoholics in a moment their brains lit up like the New York skyline. Some people...zero reaction. Those people turned out to mostly be nondrinkers. But the others turned out to be alcoholics. I think whether people can be high functioning drug users or even just occasional drug users like there are occasional drinkers or stoners or addicts depends on their personal chemistry. From this perspective some people are walking around with the nerve equivalent of a live grenade. As long as the pin is never pulled, they’ll never know. Frankly, I’d rather never know instead of finding out the bad way.
The reason medical drugs work for some and are nothing but side effects for others is although we look similar on the outside, the inside can be orders of magnitude different. The American Indians got along just fine until the Europeans introduced them to alcohol. There is hardly any American Indian culture today and a huge factor is the readily available supply of alcohol.
There’s no easy answer, like banning everything. We know banning stuff often has the opposite effect on people trying it. But doing nothing isn’t a good idea either. Some education would be in order and not the “this is your brain on drugs” idiocy. Real education. But since everything including algebra is racist it will be a long time before that happens.
I’m glad you are doing well.