Is Marijuana a gateway for harder drugs?
 

With the legalization of two states, the trend is going to sweep the nation in next 20 years. Being a father, I like to teach my children about certain paths in life to take or not to take. Personally, I don't touch Marijuana and I don't want my kids to touch that at all. But kids just like to listen to their peers.

How does the board view about this?

No.

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Only for idiots.

Gateway to Jack in the Box

TOUCH IT.

The gateway argument is along the lines of the original argument back in the day...which is that if blacks smoke it they will go crazy and rape your white wife who in no way would ever want to purposely have sex with a stud black dude instead of your pale white oppressive self.

If you don't want your kids to touch it, then i'd suggest being honest about it and understand that they may touch it anyway just because it's become so socially acceptable.

Do some people habitually use marijuana and never fall in to hard drugs? Sure, there are some people like that. Do people ever end up on hard drugs without having first started with marijuana? No, that probably rarely or never happens.

I suppose that if marijuana were unavailable, a lot fewer people would ever end up on hard drugs because a regular person doesn't wake up one day and say to himself "I feel like smoking some crack today". Sure, it would probably stop people from getting addicted to harder drugs. But it's like saying if you couldn't run 5ks, there would be a lot fewer people who ever ended up running a marathon.

I don't personally care what people do. If you want to become a burnout or ruin your life with meth or whatever, do it in your basement and don't steal from me to support your habit or expect me to pay your medical bills.

We grew up with booze and smokes legal. Our children and grand children will grow up with marijuana legal. The only tough time is the transition.

If you are gonna do drugs, you are gonna smoke pot before other things. Saying pot is a "cause" is backwards, its really the "effect".

But you are just as likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol too, so those could also be considered gateway drugs.

Sure it is.

You think that strippers want to end up being prostitues or on internet porn videos?

No, but that's just the logical progression.

Same with weed.

Start smoking weed and it's not that big of a jump to put a little meth in the pipe. And then, your kids are either in prison, screwing people for meth or money to buy meth, robbing people for money to buy meth, etc.

Everybody that I know that has ever done meth smokes weed as well.

http://tourists360.com/wp-content/up...way-Arch-2.jpg

No.

Booze is much more likely to lead someone to making a stupid decision like smoking.

Who the hell is this idiot? ^^^^

No

In an attempt to make a more serious response (since I realize you're trying to understand this for yourself)...

There is a correlation between marijuana use and the use of harder drugs. In other words, people who use cocaine, for example, likely have also used marijuana in their lives.

The issue is that correlation and causation aren't the same thing. People don't try cocaine because they tried marijuana first - it's just that people who are willing to experiment with hard drugs are typically also the types who like to experiment with softer drugs as well.

The argument becomes obvious when you also realize that cocaine users also likely drink alcohol. Is alcohol a gateway drug to cocaine? Of course not.