Lived in WA state since it was legalized and just moved to Florida. Did not notice any harm in WA except occasional drivers driving 10-20 MPH slower than speed limits.
Oh, Good Lord! My wife and I both were born here. There have been lots of people smoking pot here since the 1960s. But the magnitude has changed dramatically since legalization. It has gone from minor nonsense to major disruption. People used to show a little discretion and try to keep it discreet.
You obviously were living in a different area of the state than where we are. If the stoners around here would smoke pot in the privacy of their own homes I wouldn't really give a hoot. If any of those here can recall what it smells like when someone ahead of you has run over a skunk then you will know what it smells like when you are following a car where the occupants are toking it up. And this is something that happens basically every time that you are on the road. I am always thinking "who ran over the skunk?" and then I remember that it is someone smoking pot ahead of me.
And they don't just drive “10 to 20 MPH slower than the speed limit” and hold up traffic that way. They forget to go when the light turns green when you are in gridlock causing others to spend extra cycles of the lights stuck in traffic. They also drive erratically. One minute they are holding up traffic doing 40 mph in the fast lane, the next minute they are passing people on the right doing 80 mph. The police do little about this because they have no tools to prove what the problem is in the field.
But it is not just the driving. The city built a walking path near our house. And the potheads wander off the trail and smoke pot on our private property and stink up our house and have caused several small fires. When we have tried to run them off they have been very threatening to both my wife and I. They also leave their pot smoking paraphernalia in our yard. This is just a small sample of the types of nonsense we have had to put up with these days.
We occasionally had difficulties before legalization, but it went up ten fold after legalization. And the people causing the problems have become emboldened, obnoxious and extremely threatening. We are probably going to be forced to leave our beautiful home that we have owned for decades. It was built in 1900 and we have spent many years restoring it, but this nonsense is becoming intolerable.
Ironically we have been looking at moving to Florida. The housing prices in central Florida are good. We have friends and relatives who live there. My wife is always cold and loves warm tropical weather. So if we end up down there with you... I guess we will be able to thank the potheads. And you will have a negative consequence as well... more grumpy old neighbors.