Is weed really a gateway drug?

[Vault101]

so this is an argument I hear for against the legalisation

now to be this doesnt make all that much sense...ok Ive never done it so I really wouldnt know but..

I mean how would it be a gateway drug anymore than alchohol? to me its ALCHOHOL that seems to be the gateway drug I mean once you start getting into drinking...then it seems logical to experiement with weed as well

is it because its illigal? I mean it has that attraction of being "forbidden" and then once you try that you go for other more hardcore drugs because they promise somthing even more hardcore?

I honestly dont know

 

[Erana]

With weed, yes, its I find the illegality of the substance to be a major reason for it being a gateway drug. In order to experiment with the seemingly innocuous marijuana plant, you must first get over your qualms of breaking the law for a substance and take the step to find people who would solicit, learning the way in which these purchases are conducted.
With these two hurdles already excused in the minds of the weed consumer, the only thing standing between them and more dangerous substances is the concern over the damage they can do to oneself.

 

[Ando85]

Yea, I question the whole gateway drug thing. For me it was alchohol and smoking cigarettes that led me to abuse prescription drugs like vicodin and percocet. I'd smoke weed occasionally if I was hanging out with friends, and perhaps after that felt cocaine and dxm weren't that horrible. I think its different for each individual.

 

[waive]

A lot of people who do coke or other drugs started with weed.

A lot more started with milk.

 

[HardkorSB]

Yeah, it's a gateway to getting high.

 

[Vault101]

With weed, yes, its I find the illegality of the substance to be a major reason for it being a gateway drug. In order to experiment with the seemingly innocuous marijuana plant, you must first get over your qualms of breaking the law for a substance and take the step to find people who would solicit, learning the way in which these purchases are conducted.
With these two hurdles already excused in the minds of the weed consumer, the only thing standing between them and more dangerous substances is the concern over the damage they can do to oneself.

That does kinda make sense

so wouldn't that really be an argument to legalise it?

 

[WaReloaded]

I don't believe Marijuana to be a gateway drug, plain and simple.

 

[Senrab]

Weed is a gateway drug if the gateway can be found at the bottom of a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

 

[MICKnight1]

Yes, if only because the person who you have to purchase it from will try to convince you to move on to other, more profitable drugs.
Marijuana takes more time to cultivate and prepare than other drugs, so it behooves the dealer to get you hooked on other things.
If it could be obtained from a source that was only interested in providing Marijuana,(say an official, decriminalized, government sanctioned source,) the gateway effect would disappear.
But since that's never gonna happen, weed will always be seen as the gilded gate to a life of ruin.

 

[erbkaiser]

Yes, but only because it is illegal in most places so the only way to get it is to go to someone who also sells actual dangerous stuff.

Unlike for example alcohol, tobacco, or even caffeine it is not addictive physically or mentally, so there is no reason to keep it illegal. The only reason it was banned in the first place was to satisfy the tobacco industry, who successfully lobbied it into illegality in the USA and then elsewhere just to make sure people would be forced to buy their dangerous products instead of a perfectly natural non-dangerous alternative that has been used by humans for at least 35'000 years.

 

[Erana]

With weed, yes, its I find the illegality of the substance to be a major reason for it being a gateway drug. In order to experiment with the seemingly innocuous marijuana plant, you must first get over your qualms of breaking the law for a substance and take the step to find people who would solicit, learning the way in which these purchases are conducted.
With these two hurdles already excused in the minds of the weed consumer, the only thing standing between them and more dangerous substances is the concern over the damage they can do to oneself.

That does kinda make sense

so wouldn't that really be an argument to legalise it?

Marijuana was first illegalized in order to dissuade illegal Mexican immigrants from potentially occupying the jobs of Americans during harvest season on the West Coast... I can't recall how long ago. Its status in American society has always been a political one, regardless of belief on the substance's effects.

That's not to say I particularly like it; I strongly dislike the recreational use of substances in general.

 

[Valknott]

Getting into illegal drugs is a gateway drug like what erana said.

I know people who started with cocaine who ended up just being big pot heads.

Honestly they might as well make college illegal for being a gateway drug, it's as much a gateway drug as any other drug is. If you smoke pot you're bound to meet dealers who sell more than pot, if you go to college you're bound to meet people who sell and/or do drugs.

 

[InfiniteSingularity]

The thing with weed is it's almost harmless, it's not addictive, and it's completely natural most of the time. I don't believe in legalisation; however, do believe in abolishing all criminal charges associated with it. The reason I don't think it should be legal is because if it is it means people can sell at your corner shops, advertise it and it becomes a consumer product, soon to become a part of our capitalist economy. The other thing is that if it is this legal, everyone will be on it, drastically reducing the productivity of society. So don't punish people, but don't encourage it either.

Now the gateway thing only applies to people who have no idea what the fuck they are doing when they're getting into drugs. They'll think "oh that wasn't so bad - let's go try some acid, or snort some coke, or..." no. If you understand that weed is a completely different thing, and it isn't exactly on par with most harder drugs, then it's not likely to be a gateway drug in that sense - either, you know what you're getting into with hard drugs, and you don't care; or you don't know so you go in blind and fuck yourself up. Either way, weed is not to blame

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

It doesn't make you crave a more potent high, but it does make you ask some pretty serious questions about what you were told about drugs when you were growing up. As part of an American public school system, tax dollars were spent for someone to come in every couple of weeks and try to scare us away from drugs, tobacco, wearing gang colors, dying in fires and inadvertently discovering a parent's firearm. Even to my young mind, there was a detectable half-truth to everything they said, where they'd list all the (sometimes dubious) reasons a drug was awful for you, then explain that people do it to get a very trivial and mundane effect (think "people drink alcohol to get dizzy!"). They also spent a significant amount of time convincing us that drug users are assholes that have no friends.

So basically, they told us about things that people would do that would destroy them socially and physically, and then leave us a nice little mystery to solve for ourselves regarding what could possibly be so great about these things that would make a person do this to themselves. They also gave it an edgy fuck-the-mainstream appeal in the process. Would this flagrant half-education make people skeptically disregard the dangers of heroin after finding that their fears of cannabis were based on unfounded bullshit? I don't know of anybody that poorly informed, but conceivably it could happen, and it wouldn't be the fault of weed, it would be the fault of the people who decide to lump weed in with the bad drugs and say "all of these are equally bad for you".

 

[Astoria]

Everyone I know who's done harder drugs has started with weed. It had nothing to do with it being illegal, they just wanted to try harder and harder drugs.

 

[Maphysto]

Everyone I know who's done harder drugs has started with weed. It had nothing to do with it being illegal, they just wanted to try harder and harder drugs.

Yep, and every alcoholic once had a beer. Should we ban beer?

 

[Astoria]

Everyone I know who's done harder drugs has started with weed. It had nothing to do with it being illegal, they just wanted to try harder and harder drugs.

Yep, and every alcoholic once had a beer. Should we ban beer?

I...didn't say it should be illegal? I was just saying that yes it is a gateway drug. But just because everyone I know who does harder drugs started with weed doesn't mean everyone who does weed will move onto harder drugs.

 

[AvsJoe]

How do I put this?

Weed is not a gateway drug. However, the person who convinces you to try weed may convince you to try something else as well. If you get weed from a dealer, she might later offer you something new. If you get weed from friends, they might offer you something new. The drug is not the gateway as often as the people or source are.