Modern LLMs (in combination with harnesses etc., I'm going to elide that difference here) are probably the single most controversial consumer technology I've ever seen. I think there are good reasons for this. One comparison I see a lot of is things to the effect of "LLMs are like cocaine/heroin/meth", where the comparison is that these tools feel "good" in some way to use, and the user thinks that they're benefiting, but ultimately lead to great harm to the user (and indirectly to the people around them).
My actual position on LLMs
In the interest of being explicit, and because I've been getting distasteful for mere "view from nowhere" talking about hypocrisy: my position as I write this is "they're very helpful for me at my job, I'm ambivalent about their impact on software dev as a whole, and I think they're probably actually net negative for the world given the current state". This post is written purely by my with no LLM assistance.
This is kind of an unusual comparison to me, because it relies on the connotation of the word "drugs" in this context to only mean the harmful kind. Even among psychoactive drugs, caffeine use is normalized throughout the world as a whole. (Alcohol is also normalized, of course, but I think few people would say that it makes them better at tasks.)
But even if we restrict ourselves to the "hard drugs" category, I don't think saying "LLMs are like meth" is a good comparison. I have ADHD, and every day I take roughly 30 milligrams of lisdexamphetamine, which is a prodrug of dextroamphetamine. It provides a significant boost to my ability to focus and do tasks, both at work and at home; on days where I'm not sure if I remembered to take it, I can very much tell within an hour simply by observing whether trying to think about work feels like walking through sludge or not. On the other hand, there are other people that use lisdexamphetamine purely for recreational use, that wreck their lives with it, and that generally act in the way that people try to invoke when they say that something is "like a drug". But in both cases, it's the same molecule.
Painkillers like morphine and heroin are also a good example of this, though I don't have much firsthand experience with their use. They can suppress pain; they can cause addiction and lethargy; they can do both in the same person. It has nothing to do with the drug itself and everything to do with the circumstances around its use. In much the same way, I think that pointing to the (very real, to be clear) cases of LLM use ruining some project, or making the world worse, and going "therefore, anyone that uses these tools is doing harm to themselves by using it" doesn't really hold up.
This doesn't mean that I think we have to treat drugs and LLMs the same way in terms of stigma around use, legal regime, and so on; things that are alike in one way don't have to be alike in all ways. But the idea that anyone who uses drugs/LLMs is necessarily deluded about their benefit doesn't hold up in either case.