'DGAF' is not always evident in the short time we meet, interact with a new tenant. Unlike a job interview process (several stages of contact: phone, in person several times, etc.) it's not practical for landlords to spend that much time with each prospective tenant.
The 18 tenants I've evicted in the past year and half -- they ALL slipped 'under the radar.'
My "cues/indicators" list above is 100% NOT all inclusive.
Until you've dealt over many years with pot smokers, in quantities, you really, really have no idea how defiant/grouchy/uncooperative/troublemaking they can be, behaviors you can only witness over a period of a lease.
Here's another example. 31 yo male, he should know better, right? About the useless 'crutch' of drugs and alcohol as the foundation for personal recreation?
Smoked up a storm. He befriended surrounding tenants, and so no one complained. NOTE: in our non-smoking properties, keeping in mind that very few people smoke these days and make an effort to only live in non-smoking apartment properties, if a non-smoker is exposed to 2nd hand smoke, do they complain to Management? Oh my god. Especially pot smoke. We get complaints like "the person below me is smoking pot, you said this was a non-smoking property, I don't want to get high from their 2nd hand smoke" -- we get COMPLAINTS. It's understandable, very few people smoke or want to be in close breathing proximity to smokers these days.
Well, I had to catch him in the act, he chummed up with the surrounding tenants "in range" and somehow got them to not complain. It wasn't easy. Caught him over the course of 2 weeks on our security cameras.
We didn't tell him "Joe, we have video evidence you're smoking" we just served the 3 Day Notice. He refused to stop. Went to eviction court, he lied to the Judge. HE'S UNDER OATH. "Judge, I stopped smoking weeks ago." Lied to the Judge while under threat of perjury. DEFIANT.
Then my attorney brought forth the photos and entered them in the record. The Judge looked at Joe. I'm thinking 'it's perjury, is Joe going to jail?' The Judge must have been in a good mood. He looked at my photo evidence for 20 seconds, BAM the gavel dropped, "judgment for the plaintiff."
Pot smokers are T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
It depends on how long they've been smoking. Those 3 years I smoked it as a teen, it was in the final year I started with bad behavior, and bad experiences I finally realized were not me.
So I don't really care how much a pot smoker says "it's fine, I'm fine, it's harmless."
My philosophy with ANYONE who uses pot, and this is solely because of my 3 years personal experience and the screwed up behaviors from pot smokers over 23 years of landlording:
get away from me. Stay away from me. I don't care if you compromise your personal life by thinking intoxication is a good foundation, just don't do it around me.
That stuff is a disaster in many ways BECAUSE the damage is so incremental, that the build of up negative consequences is invisible to the user.
I have personally walked the path and I now also have 23 years of screwups, pot smoking tenants causing weird problems no other (sober) tenant causes.
Let me say, I feel deeply sorry for anyone who leans on drugs and/or alcohol for 'recreation.'
If you find yourself frequently intoxicated for 'recreation' - from pot, alcohol, whatever -- MOST people are going to have problems from it. You can throw the dice with it over the long term if you want.