Are you saying this happens a lot? Quite frankly, I don't remember it ever happening.
Sure, there are a lot of arrests for drug trafficking or drug dealing. Raids on crack houses, shooting galleries, drug dealer's houses. Arrests for buying and selling drugs. Even arrests for finding drugs during a traffic stop.
But I can't recall one single instance where the cops tracked down some drug user who was doing drugs in the privacy of his home, bothering no one, and arrested him. 1.5 million drug arrests every year and I'm not aware that even ONE of them was as you described.
So, excuse me, but what are you talking about?
What fraction of SWAT-style raids are performed on drug dealers and what fraction are on people who have, at most, a small quantity for personal use? Seems to me a lot of those raids end up hitting small-time drug users.
If the goal of a raid is to nail some big drug-dealing operation, then if it yields nothing but a couple of smoked joints in an ashtray it should be regarded as a failure. That raids which turn up tiny quantities of drugs are heralded as "successes" suggest to me that either (1) the people conducting them are perfectly happy using extreme levels of violent force against casual drug users, or (2) they have no objection to misrepresenting the "success" of their missions.
On a related note, if courts are going to allow DUI checkpoints, I'd like to see them impose a requirement that at least half of the citations and prosecutions from such checkpoints actually be for DUI offenses. If a checkpoint yields 5 DUI arrests, of which 3 yield convictions, and also yields 50 other assorted citations, then 47 of those other citations, chosen at random, should be thrown out (refunding any fees paid).
LOL, with the amount of time you spend on FR, I don’t think what you’re aware of is an accurate picture of any reality.