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Study Finds Alcohol, Not Marijuana, Is the Biggest Gateway Drug For Teens
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study out of the University of Florida which found that alcohol is the biggest "gateway" drug, the use of which increases the likelihood of other drug use. Quoting:
"In the sample of students, alcohol also represented the most commonly used substance, with 72.2 percent of students reporting alcohol consumption at some point in their lifetime. Comparatively, 45 percent of students reported using tobacco, and 43.3 percent cited marijuana use. In addition, the drug use documented found that substance use typically begins with the most socially acceptable drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, then proceeds to marijuana use and finally to other illegal, harder drugs. Moreover, the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood — up to 16 times — of licit and illicit substance use."
Somebody please tag this "obvious".
I started smoking weed far before I ever had a beer. Alcohol's what's being put on a pedestal, so people seek it out.
Who goes straight from the soda pop to the joint? That's pretty messed up. It's like a board game. First you. Must land on the bud light square, then the tequila square, and probably the abusing prescription drugs square.
I was drunk first time I ever smoked.
This should be tagged #noshitsherlock. Seriously, the only reason pot is demonized is because the tobacco and booze industries own too many politicians (and vice-versa).
Anyone who's grown up around people with substance abuse problems already knows this. Everyone I know with drug issues started out with alcohol issues.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Alcohol and Tobacco are legal! So, they can't be gateway drugs! Therefor, Marijuana is the worst gateway drug and shouldn't be legal!
studies also show that nearly 100% of hardcore drug users have previously tried water before moving on. the connection is there is no such thing as a gateway drug but every hysterical person on the planet seems to believe that there is.
The idea of a specific drug being a "gateway" to others is incredibly misleading. Alcohol and weed are the obvious places to start because they're the easiest to obtain. You're going to get to harder drugs eventually if you're that type of person, but no one is just going to start at heroin.
hi
It may be obvious that marijuana is relatively safe to anyone who actually knows about marijuana and alcohol, or cares to research it, but it isn't to those who don't. People who don't know about it are bombarded with media from the war on drugs and conservatives on how bad marijuana is. They really think smoking pot actually does cause harm to those around them, and it should be easy to understand why, with all of the top-down deception happening in the U.S. and other countries.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Science is all about formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment, performing it, and drawing reasonable conclusions which shape new hypotheses. We shouldn't be saying "WELL DUH," as if they shouldn't have bothered to do the study. Instead we should be happy that we have one more sample of interesting data than we had yesterday.
Also, this isn't the smoking gun that anti-prohibition activists might want. One potential conclusion is that prohibition is working, and that logically we should go ahead and outlaw alcohol and tobacco as well to prevent even more teens from becoming filthy marihuana smokers prone to reefer madness.
...it has anything to do with the bombardment of advertising there is for booze *everywhere*?
alcohol legal at 21 (most states) / marijunana not.
what about Canada where the age is lower to have a beer.
also in Wisconsin
http://www.revenue.wi.gov/faqs/ise/atundrg.html
Can children be in a bar with their parents?
Yes. Persons under age 21 may be on licensed premises, and can be sold and allowed to drink alcohol beverages, if they are with their parents, guardians, or spouses, as long as those persons are of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee.
Look I'm as willing as anyone to stipulate that the "war on drugs" has been a total bust and a criminal waste of resources. I've told my teenage daughter "the worst thing about pot -- the absolute worst thing -- is what the government can do to you if they catch you with it".
But.
Could the results have anything to do with alcohol being much easier to acquire than pot? This is not an apples - to - apples comparison, and wouldn't have been unless we had never repealed the eighteenth amendment.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Thanks. Most of us didn't know that.
Caffeine is the true gateway drug, and I can prove it with a single word:
Chocolate.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This article sends completely the wrong message. Alcohol is my drug of choice. Therefore its alright. The other drugs are not alright. Its quite simple. To even call alcohol a drug undermines our efforts to stigmatize other drugs. This is irresponsible.
Lack of proper parenting, poor social skills, hopelessness, and bad luck are the real gateway drugs.
The substances are the symptom in most cases.
In my own personal experience, MJ was the *last* drug I tried.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
granddaddy's granddaddy was a proper wifebeating drunk in ireland or germany. alcohol is a familiar. therefore it's ok
meanwhile, look at these mexicans and their loco weed! scary otherness! outlaw that stuff!
seriously. this is the reason marijuana is illegal in the usa:
http://www.druglibrary.org/olsen/dpf/whitebread05.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Also 1920s: “Makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” —H.J. Anslinger, Bureau of Narcotics
http://www.uccs.edu/~rmelamed/Physics%20of%20Life/Homepage/Marijuana%20and%20Racism.html
Sure, those of legal age can go into all kinds of stores, bars, or restaurants and get all the booze we want. But the fact that booze is regulated and sold by licensed establishments tends to keep sales to underage buyers fairly low. Sure, teens will still approach strangers to ask them to buy for them, but even that is being cracked down on these days.
The guy selling dime bags doesn't check IDs, and could easily be a friend or schoolmate that travels in the same social circles.
The only time when I have noticed weed being particularly hard to come by is if I am in an unfamiliar area (vacation, etc.), and don't know any other smokers who have local connections. I miss the days of being able to bring a stash with you on a trip, but not since 9/11 has that been particularly easy...
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
From TFA:
Moreover, the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood — up to 16 times — of licit and illicit substance use
All of these activities are illegal in most states for students of high school age.
Some survey respondents will be more paranoid than others, that results may be traced and held against them. Also, there may be a certain element of self-justification and delusion. (For example, if a printed survey asked adults whether they routinely drove 10 mph or more over the posted speed limit, many if most would probably say no). Those who are more comfortable admitting they that consumed alcohol would also be more comfortable about admitting use of other illegal substances. So there's this implicit acknowledgement correlation/bias that is ignored by the researchers.
The whole argument about "gateway" drugs is pointless. People are going to try what's available and what they're comfortable with (what their friends use) first and move on from there. There is no "gateway" as much as a natural progression.
I disagree. Parents, or relatives, or parents of friends are much MUCH more likely to have alcohol at home than pot. Although this is only a single datapoint, I remember how old I was when I had my first drink -- 12 -- and what it was -- rye whiskey (I didn't like it) -- at a friend's house. Seriously, which is more likely in a randomly selected household -- that we kids had found a bottle or a bag?
It's true that weed is fairly easy to come by, and it's also true that people selling drugs probably don't check ids. (Although I can imagine that a crack dealer might be reluctant to sell to an eleven-year-old.) But why go out looking for a dime bag when grandma has sloe gin in the cupboard? Occam's razor.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Moreover, the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood — up to 16 times — of licit and illicit substance use.
I would say that students smoking pot have a 100% chance of illegal substance use, I wonder how alcohol could beat that. And as for alcohol becoming a "gateway" this only shows how effectively prohibition managed to reduce marijuana use.
So you're telling me that the drug that is the legal one, the most popular, sold everywhere and advertised on every media is the one most likely to introduce teens to other drugs?
So it's not the illegal drug that is comparatively harder to find and comparatively harder to consume for a newbie?
Get outta here.
To me the gateway drug was LSD, after that I tried mushrooms (fly amanite & psylo), next salvia divinorum and finally marijuana.
With the marijuana came tobacco, to which I'm addicted.
Cause it isn't grandma's first rodeo and she knows how much booze she has? (She's a grandma, not her first teen.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The legal thing is more commonly used than the illegal thing. Next you'll tell me that more injuries are caused due to drinking than pot, without any care for the relative number of people using and/or accessibility of the two compounds.
Great Intellect...
The real point is that alcohol is available and since kids do see adults get a buzz they get the false message that it is OK to get high. From that point on it can get to be a downhill slope with death and misery as the end game. But those who already injected with the notion that it is ok to get high will see this report as some sort of pro pot recommendation. The point to emphasise is that it is not ok to get a buzz, get drunk or get high. Getting high is for cowards who can not face life full on.
The only reason the hard drugs exist is because of prohibition. If you have a black market you want the product to be as potent and easily concealable/transportable as possible. Back in prohibition times most alcohol was as high of a percentage as was easy to distill. The same with coke and heroin. Chewing Coca leaves or making tea are the preferred method of consumption in the south american countries where it is grown and legal. Smoking Opium is preferred over shooting heroin. In the US Caffeine is preferred in beverages. If caffeine was made illegal you can bet there would be a black market for it as a concentrated powder or pill. The reason it's easier to OD on hard drugs is due in part to how concentrated they are and how irregular the concentration of active pharmaceutic is.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Alcohol needs to be banned. It's far worse than any other drug I've ever heard of. No other drug kills so many people who aren't even using it (drunk driving, drunken domestic abuse, etc). Unfortunately, it will never work, as proven by the results the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
Also, marijuana needs to stay banned. Just because it isn't worse than alcohol doesn't mean it should be permitted.
I agree, think about it, most kids have got seriously drunk by the time there 16, most kids don't try pot till post secondary school, so I believe this out right.
People that say marijuana harms those around through smoke must never have heard of edibles or vaporizing. Don't make the whole argument about a single method, of which there are quite a few. Secondly, obligatory Bill Hicks: "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it."
I couldn't gt [ast this sentences:
" When Professor Bonnie and I set out to try to track the legal history of marijuana in this country, we were shocked that nobody had ever done that work before."
That's complete bullshit. As such, I can't trust the rest.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Cause it isn't grandma's first rodeo and she knows how much booze she has? (She's a grandma, not her first teen.)
You're right. Furthermore, Grandma probably also knows about the trick of watering down the remainder. (Don't ask me how I know.) So you would need to make your samples small across multiple bottles (and mix it together, which I think was called "bilge water" when we drank it as teens -- nasty) or save up samples from Grandma's only bottle over a period of time, and then have a party. It helps if Grandma is gettin' a mite forgetful.
If you live in a state where alcohol is sold right off the store shelves, there's always shoplifting.
Or you could try any of the above, and get caught, which some of us did.
But the fact that a lot of adults are nodding their heads while reading this, or can think up many other methods, (or remembering friends they lost to alcohol in their teens) means that acquiring alcohol whilst under age was not exactly unknown. Yeesh, google "underage drinking" and you get over four million hits. Acquiring alcohol was *easy*.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The problem as I see it is that people with addictive personalities will likely find something eventually to get hooked on. It might be alcohol, it might be drugs, it might be porn, it might be facebook. Some addictions clearly are more damaging than others (cocaine, herion, etc.). Others such as porn or alcohol might allow the person to functional a seemingly normal life, have a family, hold down a job, stay out of trouble with the law. What makes it difficult is that not all addictions affect people the same way or to the same degree. Alcohol is a perfect example. Some people can have a drink or two and enjoy themselves, just like in the Budweiser commercials. Other people turn into violent lunatics. For what it's worth I have never seen anyone turn violent from smoking pot. Alcohol is a much, much bigger problem than pot could ever be. 100% of all drunk driving deaths are caused by alcohol - obvious but true. Think for a moment how many murders, assaults, wife beatings, etc. are the direct result of alcohol consumption. Alcohol is the worst drug out there if you exclude coke, heroin and meth - worse than cigarettes, worse than pot, worse than caffeine. And yet our prisons are full of people busted for selling pot. Go figure.
Then the problem is the parents, not the alcohol.
I'd say the same thing with cigarettes, or a far shot... marijuana.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Food is obviously the gateway. I mean, who hasn't eaten before (and sometimes right after) doing drugs?
It's so obvious!
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
"Give one of these Mexican beet field workers a couple of puffs on a marijuana cigarette and he thinks he is in the bullring at Barcelona."
Heh .. the average stoner who found himself in the bullring in Barcelona would go fetal and cry. It is not a "proactive" experience.
You may have a point there. I'm the only person in my family who has never smoked. My wife doesn't smoke, and my teenage daughter has so far -- without any coaching from us (we didn't feel it was necessary) -- resisted peer pressure to take up smoking. My sister, who has smoked non-stop since she was 13, now as an adult has a 13 year old foster kid who -- surprise -- just took up smoking.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Marijuana is not a gateway drug.
Criminalization is the gateway.
Criminalization defines the smokers as criminals, which immediately puts them on the opposite side of law enforcement in an "us/them" dichotomy. In practice, this means that by criminalizing pot, you are forcing marijuana users to associate with black market drug dealers, which greatly exposes them to more dangerous drugs and other illegal substances, guns, and other crime. This is the actual gateway, not the plant.
In addition, the lies about the dangers of marijuana, and the absurd classification of it as a "Schedule 1" drug leads people to question the dangers of other illegal substances (including actually dangerous drugs).
e.g. "They said pot is so bad, but I see all the other kids smoking and having fun. They also say meth is bad, but since I can't take their word for it, I'll have to try it myself."
Let's see.... 72.2% of students have tried alcohol and 76% of the US population is Christian... where they give you wine once a week.
Yup, totally groundbreaking work there, guys.
You must be a big hit at parties.
Gateway drug is a misnomer. The thought is unappealing to any scientifically minded person. No one has ever conclusively demonstrated causality since there are so many exceptions to the rule. There is no clear causal path demonstrated. I would say that certain social groups are a more valid "gateway drug" than anything else. At least I have a clear argument to causality.
The results indicated that alcohol, not marijuana or tobacco, was most often the first substance students tried, he said.
You mean the far easier to obtain and not illegal for adults to posses item was used first? Shocking.
the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood - up to 16 times - of licit and illicit substance use.
16 times greater likelihood than... who? Nuns? Car thieves?
And then the real kicker. First sentence in the article says:
Alcohol - not marijuana - is the gateway drug that leads adolescents down the path toward more serious substances
Yet then they say:
substance use typically begins with the most socially acceptable drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, then proceeds to marijuana use and finally to other illegal, harder drugs.
So it looks like alcohol leads to marijuana use, not hard drug use. And it looks like marijuana use leads to hard drug use, which is the opposite of what they are saying in the first sentence?
Marijuana is a gateway drug. It lowers perception and operational intelligence so that the addict can't fully appreciate the consequences of their actions, which includes taking more dangerous drugs. It's all part of deadly spiral of most addicts. There are all kinds of self-destructive acts that are included on the way. This is one of them. Really, who here would want a doctor operating on them just smoked some marijuana? Gee, I don't see any hands. The Cannabis Legalization lobby has been trying to delude the science and facts about marijuana for years now. Don't be fooled. THC is extremely habit forming and has dubious medical value. The real solution is not criminal punishment, but mandatory drug treatment and counseling.
oldschool Dr. Demento points for you, good sir.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lack of proper parenting?
- Sometimes, you can't LEGALLY get that 16 year old to not try drugs. NO MATTER WHAT.
Poor social skills?
- The awkward teen in the back smokes pot, while the popular football player doesn't. NOT.
Hopelessness?
-You mean clinical depression.
Bad luck?
-Whoops I tripped, fell, and landed on a magic mushroom/budlight/bong/pill.
I think your describing yourself. Glad you pulled yourself together, but your logic is flawed. In my own personal experience I've seen every example of a drug addict come from any social group, including Mormons.
the damage law enforcement does is probably more significant then what the stuff itself does
Are you being sarcastic, or do you realize that we're talking about orders of magnitude more damage, starting with the blatant violation of a person's natural human right (god-given if you prefer) to self-ownership?
Medical cannabis patient and expert here (marijuana is a pejorative term)
The lung cancer risk is only there for those who smoke (combust) it because of the carcinogens in the smoke.
Ingesting or vaporizing it does not have this risk.
These things are how I learned to get high
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGQ3y91llcM
The issue is why people feel compelled to self-medicate. A beer or glass of wine or a dram of whiskey can be food and/or something to be enjoyed. Or it can be abused as a drug. Anything in excess, whether it be food, alcohol, weed, shopping, sex, exercise, etc, especially if it's being used to check out of the reality of one's life, is dangerous. Granted, pounding a bottle of Jack and running 10K may have opposite effects on the body, but if you're checking out, then you aren't dealing with the organic neurological and/or dysfunctional emotional issues.
Whether weed is more benign than alcohol hardly matters if your inclination is to wake and bake, slack at work, let the kids cook dinner for themselves while you sleep off a bong-hit or any of the myriad other chronic stoner check-outs.
I say treat emotional/mental illnesses as we would high blood pressure or any other disease. I bet if the stigma for treating behavioral health issues were removed, we'd see less in the way of substance abuse, and lifestyle diseases such as Type II Diabetes and obesity would start dropping in reported cases, because then we'd finally admit that the brain is the most important organ in the body, and its health governs much of the overall health of the body. We'd also notice a drop in child abuse, spousal abuse, personality disorders, and see a lot higher quality of life.
I KNEW IT ... I always wondered why every time I got high, I would end up in the kitchen searching for snacks, instead of seeking out the local heroin dealer.
Keywords for the NSA overthrow oppressive regime true believers marathon Manhatten the financial district blueprints I
DUDE NO WAY...
hahaahhahaaha!
Drugs are part of psychological makeup,they are owned by The Crown(whats in your head and out of your head)
Drugs are an influence,if you look at it,there is a reason behind the drive for drugs,where dose it come from?It comes from the Girls of the earth,they take after colors,environment and space ands even special natural plants.
To take drugs achives a higher level of thinking,and this comes from the influence.
Just because someones makeup is related to cannabis or heroin,dose not mean they take it,but as the influence,they have a gathering of followers,Take a look at the POT culture,they even speak different always have,and heroin culture,they always kill people,in extreme cases,.
Ill give you a hint,The following was sent to The Queen when drugs addicts invaded the influence,alot of them were from the USA
dehoner
she was the Princess of Persia
Do you understand what dehoner really means?
It means the Queen is meant to hold all drug addicts at her side,when it is found that she dose not do this,it is dehoner
Same goes for poofters.
Just imagine if the law was there for a reason,stopping some world event which leads to a cosmic event,
Changing the law could lead to......????
Physiological problems for the highest of the highest,even god
The irony is that, if there is in fact much of connection at all between marijuana use and use of any hard drugs, it's surely a direct result of the fact that they're both illegal, and therefore tend to be associated with the same group of people...the dealers for example. Using that as an argument for prohibition is the most astonishingly insane circular logic I can imagine. Then again, it comes from people who have no facts or history on their side, so what more would you expect?
It can even produce new users.
Yep, and I'll bet that 100% of students drank water sometime in their lifetime... Therefore, water is more of a gateway drug than Alcohol.
how about them
The gateway drugs are all those ways children enjoy altering their perceptions: spinning around in circles, hanging upside down, pressing the eyes to stimulate pretty colors. Sugar binges probably count. There are doubtless many others.
Medium time effects have quite an influence. After losing the "high" you will have less concentration and less short term memory capability for days, weeks and even months to follow, depending on how long and how much you smoked before. Daily use of half a gram or more for a year will have influence on you for months after you quit smoking. Each individual reacts more or less severe to this and it totally depends on the individual and the circumstances how much this will actually have effect on your daily life, but it's a very real and significant effect of cannabinols on the human mind.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Legalizing doesn't make the psychosis go away. In the Netherlands it's legal and there are plenty of fucked up people smoking themselves into an even more fucked up state, instead of dealing with their crap and getting on with their life without smoking.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Of course marijuana, now apparently alcohol, is the first drug many kids gets their hands on. It's the easiest to get! But then some kids start doing drugs with benzos and opioids because their live-in grandma takes them. I could say a neighbor kid I grew up with used canned whip cream as a gateway drug because he moved on to heroin.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
You make it sound like slavery was somehow a limited thing - the reality is that at one time or another slavery was considered perfectly acceptable in every corner of the world, though admittedly the whole racial-slavery thing was less widespread and took a particularly ugly turn - usually slaves were people captured as spoils of war and their children were born free.
The narcotic opium was legal once and even a form of currency. Afghanistan, the main source of opium has few drug addicts. In China however, wide-spread opium addiction was so damaging that society that couldn't function. The drug had to be banned. A similar effect was caused by alcohol introduced to primitive societies. Eg. Australia, North America.
I met a social worker who opined that drug addiction was a genetic and emotional weakness. Given the cold, cruel world, I wonder how many humans don't have an emotional nerve that can be soothed by chemical happiness.
Next people talk about gateway drugs: That one drug 'legitimizes' or encourages the use of all other drugs. I see plenty of drug addicts limit themselves to one drug where they, are essentially in control. In these cases, drug contamination and unregulated dosage (as an injection) are the cause of harm.
I've also seen, the longer one is immersed in drug experimentation, the more likely the drug addict succumbs to a drug that controls them.
Stuff it where the sun don't shine. Seriously.
Looky-looky men are your best bet in Europe.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Legalizing doesn't make the psychosis go away. In the Netherlands it's legal and there are plenty of fucked up people smoking themselves into an even more fucked up state, instead of dealing with their crap and getting on with their life without smoking.
Name one.
Sounds more like your prejudice and ignorance talking here, not experience.
Baby milk, surely?
I got drunk at first.
I then took Acid and MDA (XTC's daddy)
I tried some weed, but didn't like it.
Spent most of the next year, Drunk or high on acid or MDA
finally, started smoking marijuana regularly.
Still drank, still did Acid & MDA, and some other stuff.
Discovered Heroin.
Wasted the next 15 years.
Quit the heroin.
Just smoke weed now.
In hindsight, I should of just stayed with the weed and maybe my life would be different, but since that doesn't matter shit, I have this to say:
No fucking drug was a gateway drug for me. I choose to do "harder" drugs because I wanted to. I made the choice, I wasn't forced to the choice by any drugs I took before, since they can NOT force me to do anything.
Gateway drugs is just an excuse for our failings as humans to keep others safe from the dangers of themselves. We only care about what a druggy/alcoholic is doing with it affects us, otherwise, we don't give a damn.
Guess what, people are going to drink, people are going to do drugs. Why? because they generally want to, or they are stupid and let peer pressure them into doing it, but it comes down to their choice. Nothing you could of done would probably change that. People make choices all the time, good or bad. But they make them.
Be seeing you...
...that people driving from New York to San Francisco are more likely to drive through Chicago than Mexico City.
Well, not discrediting the study, but can't see causation as they do. What I find is that any relevant substance that causes any kind of addiction is a gateway by itself.
Alcohol's just widely available, cheaper and legal. There's no "taboo" effect as there is on illegal drugs so no regret for drinking (only regret is for one making an ass of themselves when drinking too much). I can see this by looking at recent history in my country, here in the 60's and 70's drinking was looked down upon, but smoking canabis wasn't, and most of the older hard drug users were the stoners (who actually drank as well) not the drinkers (and in my generation reversed, because smoking isn't allowed but drinking doesn't have any social restraint anymore).
In conclusion, what I do find is that at any given time anyone with the tendency for addiction or will to alter perception/behaviour will go for the cheaper and more accepted (social and legal wise) drug, until it doesn't give them the seeked buzz anymore. And that will skew results and conclusions for this kind of studies. And not everyone that uses drugs (legal or otherwise) are addicts or want a joy ride. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
If there's a gateway drug I think it's something like Tylenol, Advil or childrens cough syrup. From a very young age we take these over the counter medications as a first response to illness. They're cheap, have few side effects and we don't have to know much to use them. Our parents endorse this behavior, we don't have to ask for permission and it's socially acceptable. We're also free to experiment. Pretty soon we learn that Tylenol doesn't work for a strained muscle and Advil doesn't work as well for a tension headache.
yeah well no sh*t
I've been waiting for the alcohol witch hunt to begin ever since the great victory over tobacco. Let's have lots more laws forbidding stuff to protect the citizens! Yay ....
Like one huge, ugly, cancerous, pulsating mass. Incredible. It should be sent to a lab, dissected, analyzed, and studied, for rational people to determine just how it's possible for a person to be so deluded. Afterwards, nuke it from orbit.
Nothing ever said that anyone -was- "forced" to do any other drugs by what they chose to do before; the point of a gateway drug is just in the perfectly reasonable hypothesis that if someone takes a psychoactive substance and enjoys it, they might then decide to try a different, "harder" substance next. Just like you did.
My perspective on it is, if we treat all drugs as equally bad, a person is far more likely to end up in a situation like you did. I feel personally that a person should be free to make idiotic choices like getting hooked on crack if they want to, without the government telling them they can't, but that the government -should- make sure they know before doing it that they're making one. On the other hand, when it comes to drugs that are far easier to use safely and in moderation, like pot, they should have warnings, but far less scary ones, so people don't just lump them all together.
i have this eternal hope that the countries of the world will realise how badly they were strong-armed and coerced by the Pharma, Tobacco, Alcohol syndicates through their Spokesperson the USA Government, circa 1960, to make marijuana illegal. Pre 1960, marijuana was legal is India, for all practical purposes it still is, but the users live in perennial fear of being caught and asked to fork "baksheesh" (bribe) or maybe even worse, actually be sent to prison (in case the police have to catch up on their arrests-numbers). Now after stopping the legal sale of marijuana around the world, the USA opens up Medical Marijuana shops/cafes. Wow. And the rest of the world still does not re-legalize it.
But i live in hope, that if not most of the world, at least India will legalize it and penalize alcohol and tobacco.
At age 16, I chose to alter my consciousness with alcohol. About a year or so later, I decided to try cannabis for the first time. Some of my friends were talking about it, and I became curious. Throughout my public school tenure, I had been misinformed about the herb by various police officers and teachers via the "Drug Abuse Resistance Education" program, or "DARE". My friends spoke of the weed as a great thing; they were planning to smoke later in the evening, and they were all very excited about it. For the most part, all of my experiences with cannabis have been excellent. The only problem I encountered has been due to the black market.
The black market ensures that you can never be really sure of where the drug comes from, unless you grow it yourself or go to a dispensary. In a black market, you can never be sure that you'll even get it, because the dealer has to get it himself, and his source is usually someone mysterious or unreliable. The quality varies, as does the obscenely inflated price. You never know whether you'll get a sativa, indica, hybrid, or total shit. If the dealer does come through, then the next potential problem arises: how to transport the drug back home, or to a safe location, without being caught. Imagine: caught with a plant; at that basic level, the very idea is ludicrous. Are we children or adults? Do we need babysitters? Can't we make our own decisions?
This is the problem that I have had with cannabis. The drug itself, if unadulterated, is a splendor. It's not for everyone, sure, but as sentient beings with sovereignty over our own consciousness, can't we decide for ourselves? Is it right for another person, or a group of people, to make decisions for someone else?
Think for yourself. Question authority.
to that
Acquiring alcohol was easy, almost as easy as pot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.