Interesting. In my case, I only hear it from people who have landed in jail or the hospital or both because of drugs. And I know a lot of them - clearly more than you seem to think. Not one of them has ever said to me that they though starting out with MaryJane was just a coincidence. ALL of them have said to me that the high eventually wasn't enough for them and the culture that offered them MJ allowed them to easily transition to the harder stuff.
If someone is convicted of possession of drugs they are almost always placed on probation, and one of the conditions of their probation is that they obtain drug treatment. The big problem with drug treatment is that it is not magic. The offender really must want to change his or her life and get away from drugs. All too often they have no desire, and end up just going through the motions of drug rehab. As a result, they generally end up going to prison. Once out of prison many return to drugs, either using or selling or both. So they end up back in prison. After a while it finally dawns on them that spending half your life in prison is not such a hot deal, and so they finally decide to give up drugs. A few learn the first time, but not many.
Tell me . . . how many of them drank alcohol or smoked tobacco? Talk about gateway drugs. More alcohol abusers move on to hard drugs than marijuana abusers. The fact is, that alcohol and tobacco are physically addictive and marijuana isn't. Addictive personality types will find their way to narcotic drugs no matter what they start with, while others can experiment with lots of drugs without ever becoming addicted to any of them.
Again. It's not about the addictive quality of MJ (and the high is clearly addictive - maybe not chemically, but certainly otherwise), but it's about the almost certain access to all the other, harder, extremely addictive drugs. Folks who drink booze bought from 7/11 or Albertsons don't automatically have a built-in connection to folks selling crack. To answer your question, most of them smoke and all of them abuse alcohol at one point or another. But that has zero bearing on my point.
Right and folks who buy would buy weed from Albertson's or grow their own in their back yard wouldn't either. This is why the gateway drug argument does not make sense to me.
bull sh!t. its no more a gateway drug than alcohol is. i don't ever remember telling myself, Damn pot is good, think i will try crack now. That statement is utterly ridiculous. The problem is too many people want to push their ideals and beliefs on everyone else. I wonder if eating red meat leads to cannibalism. maybe smoking cigarretes lead to heroin use? Watching 24 must lead to terrorism right? It's no one's right to tell anyone else what they can and cannot do to themselves as long as they don't infringe upon another's rights.
It's an argument that goes nowhere. Folks who smoke pot want to have it legalized and refuse to believe there is any significance in the fact that almost every heroin addict or coke addict started with pot. Folks who don't smoke pot can't possibly have a legitimate opinion because they don't smoke pot so they don't "know". If pot isn't chemically addictive, then it can't be harmful and certainly can't be a "gateway drug". Nobody wants to discuss the culture reality. The subculture surrounding pot is the entry way to harder drugs. Not everyone goes through the door. Many, many do. And it's not because of chemical addiction. It's in search of a better high, or to stay cool with all the bros who are graduating from pot to something else. These aren't my ideas. This comes from addicts who are having varying degrees of success staying clean. But if you smoke pot, none of this makes any sense to you because you smoke pot and you're just fine.
Just my .02 but I have never done any drugs outside of drinking a lot of alcohol. I have however witnessed quite a few people that have inhaled the hippie lettuce and here is my observation as it relates to weed being a gateway. I have never witnessed a person that was stoned say something like "I'm going to climb that tree, grab that branch and swing over to the roof so I can get little jimmys airplane then I'm going to do a double gainer into the pool in the back yard" Now drunk MF'ers will do crazy chit like this all the time. May or may not be important. I still can't believe she named her son "Sincere" that may be the real crime here.
