I wasn’t really sure if this should go in Great Debates or IMHO, but when I realized what I was going to title it, I thought it should go here. Mods, please feel free to move it.
Is marijuana really a “gateway” drug? I understand that for some, caffeine can be a “gateway” to the “harder stuff” like speed and the like, but is it actually a known fact that marijuana use leads to the use of “harder” drugs? I know plenty of people who only smoke pot and won’t touch anything else; I also know people who started off with cocaine and eventually “worked their way” to marijuana.
So what are your thoughts? Any former pot-smokers who never tried the hard stuff? Current smokers? Former or recovering coke addicts who started with pot?
Personally, I can sit and smoke a joint and not even want to do coke, but then again, I also used to have a bit of a problem with the nose candy, so maybe I am proving my own point. Fellow dopers … your comments.
i was an occassional pot smoker, so i don’t know how much my opinion will matter since i was never a true pot head. i never had the desire to move on to the hard stuff. it just held no appeal to me. but then again, i’ve seen what coke and herion can do to you and maybe that’s part of what kept me away from it.
I firmly belive that the whole “gateway drug” thing is absolute, total nonsence. The drug warriors were confronted with the fact that marijuana is (a) noticably less harmful then the hard drugs it’s lumped in with under the law, and (b) actually beneficial for some medicinal purposes. They needed a justification for keeping the stuff illegal, and “gateway drug” was what they came up with.
Actually, I’d say that calling it a “gateway drug” is tantamount to admitting that it isn’t on a par with cocaine, heroin, etc. Any time the only justification for outlawing something is “because it might lead to something bad,” it must be suspected that the thing in question is not likely to be particularly bad in and of itself.
And anyone who believes the “gateway drug” argument is, IMHO, falling into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. They look at hard drug users, see that many of them used pot before they used hard drugs, and jump to the conclusion that the pot use somehow led to the hard drug use. But they are ignoring two things. They are ignoring all the pot users who do not “go on” to anything else, and they’re ignoring all the other things the hard drug users used earlier in their lives, such as sniffing glue and drinking all sorts of intoxicating beverages.
I don’t feel that marijuana is a gateway drug. For it to be a gateway drug it should contain some property that would make people want to take harder drugs. Yeah you can get high on marijuana but in my experience the high you get from a joint pales in comparison to the high one gets from an hour on an exercise bike. Simply put, just because it gets you high doesn’t mean that it will encourage you to go for bigger, better highs.
I think that people perceive using marijuana as the beginning of a slippery slope. IMHO, the only real problem with marijuana is that it’s illegal (you might disagree). It doesn’t lead one to overdose, and, while it is addictive, its effects are much less devastating than, for instance, alcohol (or, again, IMNSHO, tobacco). It does, however, require that one break the law. For certain people, the illegality of drugs is the only thing that keeps them from using them. Once they are enticed to break the law in order to smoke marijuana, this type will probably start to see law-breaking as Not That Big Of A Deal. If their moral/intellectual objections only go so far as a fear of punishment, once they see that they probably WON’T get caught smoking weed, it’s more likely that they’re going to try other stuff.
Likewise, there are people who see that marijuana, while being illegal, is completely different from, say, heroin. They might not have moral objections to weed, but will have them in relation to smack, coke, whatever. For them, the law isn’t the only thing holding them back.
Regular pot-smoker here, especially in the wake of a most painful and fear-inspiring medical procedure. I never really messed with the “harder” drugs–never even thought seriously about trying crack or heroin.
But not because I didn’t have the option, because I sure as hell did and probably still do.
As long as marijuana remains illegal, I’ll have to procure it from essentially the same source that supplies dangerous, highly addictive drugs. Furthermore, because what I choose to do is already illegal, there is virtually no moral constraint upon me to not try those dangerous, addictive drugs. I don’t simply because I took the pains to inform myself, and I decided it’s not in my best interest.
The dealer is the gateway, not the drug itself. Take him out of the picture and reefer becomes as innocuous as a couple of martinis. Unfortunately, that’s just my opinion, and there are people out there who will devote their lives to opposing my position. So I’m just going to have to shut up and deal with the possible consequences of my actions for the forseeable future.
I think that hash can be a “gateway drug” in that;[ul]
[li]A user, accustomed to buying one illegal drug, would find it easier to get hold of another than Joe Average.[/li][li]A user may be offered other drugs in place of the weed they wanted if their dealer doesn’t have any.[/li][li]A user, having sampled one illegal drug which is deemed dangerous and harmfull and having found the experiemce enjoyable may then be more likely to think that other, more harmfull, drugs are misrepresented.[/ul][/li]
Legalise it of course, and in addition to making the points above moot, you would free up resources within the police and judiciary to fight serious crime.
Raises Hand Yup! Me too occasional consumer. During College I was a regular consumer and into grad school. The urge has dwindled and the consumption has all but dissappeared, but occasionally whilst visiting friends we will indulge a bit. I strongly disagree that Mary Jane is a ‘gateway’ drug Here are a couple reasons:
People who like the speedier more expeditious drugs coke, heroin, speedy-gonzalez type intoxicants are out for a completely different altered state. They are out to speed along and find something they will never actually find. The ultimate. Sorry folks thats not what ya get when you like those things. A blown out septum maybe, but never the mellow, luggage type feeling ganja has to offer.
Secondly, we who partake know what we are after-> Mellowness and ease of the nerves or conversely hightened nerves and just a nice altaered state of being. Or there are those who like to wake-and-bake and be high all day! I do not advocate this stance at all. Occasional recreation is much different.
Basically if one is not happy with mary jane and decides to go the other way to the dark side if you will. That person is on a different quest than those of us who spark the weed. They are out to find something different, more of a risk taker if you will…
Granted for some it may be a slippery slope leading to other things, but this I believe is because they allow themselves to be taken by that nasty wave. I say stick to the herbal supplements…Its much safer. Anyone up for a trip to Amsterdam?
I’ve been known to partake on the odd special occasion, like on days with a y in them,
Actually, in my experience, the dealers who deal in weed tend to be different to the dealers who deal in hard drugs. Weed dealers may have access to speed, exctasy, possibly coke but not crack or heroin.
The crack/heroin boys don’t tend to bother with weed. Its considered small-time.
So the guy who sells you a bag of weed will probably have no more access to getting hold of crack than the average Joe does.
All drugs are different, they don’t replace each other. You smoke weed recreationally, maybe after a long day at work or something, to relax. You wouldn’t use E like this - that is more for going out and partying, likewise coke. You wouldn’t use cocaine, speed or E in the same way you would use dope.
So if the dealer doesn’t have any weed you would probably leave it a coupla days and come back when he’s got some in. Its not addictive (like someone said before) so you don’t have to have it there and then.
And he’d be right but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna become a junkie crackhead type. He will still possess a normal human intellect and can still make rational decisions for himself.
Hard drug use in Holland declined substantially after they de-criminalized marijuana in the 1970’s. Here in the states, a study found that hard drug abuse was lower in states that had decriminalized marijuana (Rand Corporation study, 1994).
It is a gateway drug here in the U.S., but not because smoking marijuana makes you want to try harder stuff, it’s just that to get marijuana you have to make contacts with drug dealers, many of which sell other drugs as well. There’s also the fact that if you are the kind of person who is willing to try harder drugs, you most likely will have smoked pot too, there’s no causality there. If you do coke or speed you probably also drink and smoke cigarettes, they didn’t lead to your drug habit, they’re just something else to do.
The ‘gateway’ spin of the anti-legalisation lobby seems to have had much longer legs in the US than elsewhere – presumably more than they could possibly have hoped.
It is, in fact, now redundant, IMHO. I’d invite posters to consider my post in this very short thread and accept that the issue now is one of the clinical merits of the substance. US posters need to know what the Supreme Court have done.
Like much of Europe, the UK has recently ‘de-criminalised’ marijuana ahead of the trial results and, also, as a result of continued lack of public support for the law. It’s over. Welcome to the 21st century.
Just how many people smoke tobacco before trying marijuana? Just how many people would even consider inhaling hot smoke from a burning object if they hadn’t frequently seen it done already with cigarettes? Sounds like a dangerous and unpleasant thing to do, doesn’t it?
I’m betting you’ll find a very large correlation in both cases. Tobacco is therefore the number one gateway drug.
Now, just how many people drank coffee before trying smoking? Again, I suspect a pretty high correlation. How many of these people thought coffee tasted pretty disgusting the first time they tried it, but through peer pressure and recommendation kept at it? Is this not suspiciously like how people start smoking? Where do people meet these so-called friends and first try these things? The finger of guilt invariably points at school.
Coffee, your friends and school are gateways to hard drugs and the statistic prove it! They should all be outlawed immediately!
Or maybe the whole concept is a load of bull and the only gateway is the common criminal source of supply?
I started with beer. Then Cigarettes. Then weed, then speed, acid, cocaine, paint fumes, glue, muscle relaxers, pain-killers, crack…
Can I blame it on the beer???
Look how much the anti-drug agenda is pushed on students in middle/high school. Marijuana, along with all other drugs, is villified. Then the kids actually try it first (as its available, and better tolerated in our society than other drugs), and find its relatively harmless. Ergo, maybe crack/herion etc. may not be too bad after all, too. Right?
In the 1930’s, mothers warned their daughters off the nasty gum-chewing habit by repeating the famous “Gum-chewers are sluts” syllogism:[ul][]A girl that chews gum will smoke.[]A girl that smokes will drink.A girl that drinks will do anything.[/ul]Sound familiar?
It’s time for the US to lighten up with this whole reefer madness nonsense. How anyone informed can take the struggle against marijuana in the US seriously is just beyond me.
I guess it’s another example of a “cause worth fighting for”. It’s not really worth fighting for, but it does gain one misguided popularity in the community.
