Is Marijuana a gateway for harder drugs?

[Msmith]

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?

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

I smoked weed a couple times with a guy that developed a technology that pretty much everybody on this message board has used at least once. He was a regular smoker like me and has a Masters Degree in EE.

Anybody with a Masters or above in electrical engineering is an idiot.

Those guys are some of the dumbest ****ers I've ever met.

And I'm not talking from a pure intelligence perspective.

I'm talking about their ability to cognitively reason on a normal level. They just can't do it.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by CapsLockKey

There is nothing chemically about smoking weed that makes people crave shooting up some heroine along side it.

There's no chemical relationship between marijuana and nearly any other illegal substance.

Nicotine is addictive. Alcohol is addictive. Opiates are addictive. All of these substances create a body chemistry issue in which your body will CEASE TO FUNCTION correctly if it doesn't get more of said substance.

Marijuana has never been found in any scientific way to be addictive. Psycho-active? Yes. Habit forming? Yes. Physically addictive? Not one study.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

Anybody with a Masters or above in electrical engineering is an idiot.

Those guys are some of the dumbest ****ers I've ever met.

He also has a BS in Physics.

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

He also has a BS in Physics.

Sounds about par for the course.

It's like having an English degree and not having a degree in History.

Why have an EE BS if you aren't going to have one in Physics?

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

Sounds about par for the course.

It's like having an English degree and not having a degree in History.

Why have an EE BS if you aren't going to have one in Physics?

Like I said, he also was part of a small group that pioneered a technology that's used in nearly every household in the United States.

But if you say he's dumb, he surely must be.

[Johnny Vegas]

Ritalin is a gateway as well as porn

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

Anybody with a Masters or above in electrical engineering is an idiot.

Those guys are some of the dumbest ****ers I've ever met.

And I'm not talking from a pure intelligence perspective.

I'm talking about their ability to cognitively reason on a normal level. They just can't do it.

Nice edit.

You mean "they lack common sense"?

He's just fine on that front. He's a normal dude just like anybody else. He's not a "super genius" anymore than he's a "burnout".

[WhiteWhale]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

I'm not going to argue against your individual hypothesis.

There is no way that you are going to have zero prohibition at any level within any society as it relates to alcohol, drug use, etc. The effects are so varied and uncontrollable under individual usage that no society will ever allow zero prohibition on such things. As such, your argument is invalid.

Don't take my argument to absurd extremes. You know I wasn't talking about selling weed, heroin, beer, and pcp at a gas station to anyone who wanted it. At least be intellectually honest. I think you know what it's called when you pervert someone's argument into something else for the purpose of making it sound ridiculous.

You assertion that 'weed invariably leads to smoking meth and prostitution.', which you made multiple times prior to this post, is an invalid assertion that you made with mere correlation as any form of evidence. I, at the very least, can acknowledge that I'm being speculative. I was offering alternatives as well as variables that your assertion did not account for in any way.

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

And because of the individual psychological and physiological variants are so wide, there is no way that it can be a situation where it's a "either/or" as it relates to correlation or causation. That's really the whole point of my blathering - that because there is no way to specifically determine the gateway conceptualization as it relates to one specific drug, either from an individual or societal perspective, it has to be addressed in a more encompassing authoritarian manner based on what society perceives as correct from a majority perspective. (And, even then, I'm not necessarily sure that in these instances that the majority of a society can be trusted with the decision making process. Perhaps Hamilton was right after all...)

I'm impressed with your lexicon but not so much your rational. You seem to be, at your base, very dishonest.

Firstly I don't believe either myself or Htis ever insisted it was an 'either/or' proposition. I'm not sure if you're trying to strawman your trolling into a legit position or what. You made an absurd and near absolute assertion, and we said the only evidence you provided is correlation. By itself that is not strong enough to stand on it's own. There are many variables, which I mentioned, that you ignored. Now you're essentially admitting the variables exist and make it impossible to tell if correlation does equal causation in this particular case. You are operating on the presupposition that it IS true. I'm operating only in dispute of your initial bullshit trolling.

Just admit you were trolling.

[DenverChief]

Is oral sex the gateway for butt sechs?

[tooge]

not unless you hang with a crowd that does harder drugs as well

[WhitiE]

I tried alcohol before trying marijuana, is alcohol a gateway substance?

[Arrowhead Thunder]

someone referred to alcohol as "drank"

these are not the same!

[Ming the Merciless]

Originally Posted by Pablo

The only people who use the term gateway drug anymore are out of touch burb dwellers that wear their pants above their belly button and think laffy taffy is risky after seven p.m. because it's gets them wound up.

The people that think marijuana is a gateway drug, and blame MJ for being the CAUSE of hard drug abuse are the same kind of people who blame cops for the problems of Ferguson...or blame the sunni/shia or palestine/israel problems on the USA...etc

They are simpletons trying to understand a complex issue and grasping on to one of any number of factors in the subconscious hope that they can make some sense of a chaotic, complicated world with a ton of variables....

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by WhiteWhale

Don't take my argument to absurd extremes. You know I wasn't talking about selling weed, heroin, beer, and pcp at a gas station to anyone who wanted it. At least be intellectually honest. I think you know what it's called when you pervert someone's argument into something else for the purpose of making it sound ridiculous.

I take it for what it is. You specifically based your argument on "zero prohibitions" did you not?

You assertion that 'weed invariably leads to smoking meth and prostitution.', which you made multiple times prior to this post, is an invalid assertion that you made with mere correlation as any form of evidence. I, at the very least, can acknowledge that I'm being speculative. I was offering alternatives as well as variables that your assertion did not account for in any way.

I've already stated that there were far too many variables within the individual themselves, let alone a specific society as a whole, to have either the corollary or causation argument to have absolute validity. Your "speculative" alternatives were purely hypothetical and irrational to boot. Don't get mad at me about it if the shit you are basing your argument around is just plain silly.

I'm impressed with your lexicon but not so much your rational. You seem to be, at your base, very dishonest.

Firstly I don't believe either myself or Htis ever insisted it was an 'either/or' proposition. I'm not sure if you're trying to strawman your trolling into a legit position or what. You made an absurd and near absolute assertion, and we said the only evidence you provided is correlation. By itself that is not strong enough to stand on it's own. There are many variables, which I mentioned, that you ignored. Now you're essentially admitting the variables exist and make it impossible to tell if correlation does equal causation in this particular case. You are operating on the presupposition that it IS true. I'm operating only in dispute of your initial bullshit trolling.

Just admit you were trolling.

And what, pray tell, were the variables that you mentioned? Your illogical hypothetical of zero prohibition?

The only problem I have had with this is the people who immediately threw out the correlation does not equal causation bullshit that always gets thrown out with this subject matter without understanding that life is, in and of itself, very rarely one thing or another. And specifically, I mentioned early on in the conversation "convergent cross mapping.":

IT'S one of the fundamental problems in science: when two events take place, can we tell whether one directly caused the other, or if the two follow a similar pattern for a different reason?

Separating correlation and causation is notoriously difficult. People might become more tanned when they eat more ice cream, but that doesn't mean ice cream gives you a tan; it probably just means it's summer.

In many cases the link between two variables seems more likely to be causal - for instance, smoking and lung cancer, or atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and climate change. But because it is so tricky to prove causality, it's easy for those sceptical of the link to belittle it with reference to spurious correlations like ice cream and tanning.

A new mathematical test could help settle these arguments.

So, as such, I, without question, realize that variables exist and that there are people working on new theorem regarding this exact issue of correlation and causation.

As far as your criticizing of my "evidence" goes, it reminds me of the very tried argument of "prove it" without having to prove anything yourself. It's an easy way out when taking the causation side of the argument when it relates to human/biological nature, don't you think?

BTW - "Dishonest," "trolling," "strawman." The words of someone who just got their ass kicked.

It's okay.

It happens.

Don't take it personally.

[Dayze]

I'm so high right now.