Is pot really a "gateway" drug ?

[Chipper]

Is cannabis really a "gateway" drug?

It was for me but that's just because it was available in school, was cheap and I grew my own before I discovered morphine and amphetamines.

What do you think?

I went for "maybe" and started when I was 13. Morphine ampules at 16.

[OxyBlowBall2]

well i know i started out with pot too. it wasnt like pot wasnt enough anymore and i needed something harder to do. i was curious about all drugs but pot was the first one i could get a hold of so i dunno if it is really a gateway drug. maybe it is for some people.

[Seedy]

i voted yes as in yes it can be. for me the first gateway drug was alcohol, when I found out that alcohol actually is just another drug, and that some of my friends were smoking weed and they were ok I soon started smoking it myself. Pretty much as soon as I knew I had access to other drugs I was curious. So I guess for anyone predisposed to enjoying being intoxicated any drug can be a gateway.

[Dan Steely]

I think I started with ciggs(for the buzz). Grass in the fall of my 6th grade and then I got really drunk 7th grade new years. My daughter is in eighth grade and I can't imagine her and her tiny little friends doing stuff like that. I really don't think she does. I would be floored to find out otherwise. She's so small and child like but I can tell she is turning a corner in her life. I do think she'll stay clean for awhile though. She seems to have bought into the "drugs are bad" mindset. My dad could tell I was gonna do whatever I wanted so his drug talk was just "be careful". I have been pretty careful too. I wonder if that was why.

Is weed a gateway? Maybe sorta but I think it's more a matter of having a curious mentality and a degree of independent arrogance too.

Years before I ever got involved with opiates I would often say that people that did opi's were arrogant to think that "they" would be cool enough not to get addicted, and that's exactly what I thought when I got started.

[youwonhundred]

Originally Posted by Dan Steely

Is weed a gateway? Maybe sorta but I think it's more a matter of having a curious mentality and a degree of independent arrogance too.

Said better than I would have.

[Chipper]

I think you're onto something, DS. Maybe Nicotine or alcohol are the real gateway drugs.

[digby]

I agree with Seedy in that for most people, alcohol is likely the original gateway drug closely followed by grass. I think this was more true when other drugs were less available than grass and grass was dirt cheap. But I challenge anyone to think back and decide if they had grass before a beer or a mouthful of alcohol - and that should decide what indeed is the true gateway drug.

[OxyBlowBall2]

Originally Posted by digby

But I challenge anyone to think back and decide if they had grass before a beer or a mouthful of alcohol - and that should decide what indeed is the true gateway drug.

i had pot before alcohol. i was a freshman in high school when i first started smoking. i didn't really drink until i was a sophomore. actually i did speed and pain killers before i started drinking too so alcohol wasn't a gateway drug for me.

[Flowergirl]

For me it wasn't. For kids, lack of parental involvement and entirely too much unsupervised free time are gateway drugs.

It just stands to reason that pot is on the bottom of the totem pole in terms of what drugs those who choose to use do first. Probably right near alcohol and nicotine. No one goes straight for lines of coke or a syringe of heroin, I don't think. If you become a user of hard drugs, you probably screwed around with weed at one time or another first. That's like saying your first crappy apartment is a gateway home. No shit.

[Morfiend]

marijuana being illegal causes you to meet people who sell other things/use other things as well. I think if you could purchase marijuana at a store or grow it legally, the correlation between marijuana and say opiate use would be no different than cigarettes and opiate use.

[I-Nod]

Seedy took the words right outta my mouth. Alcohol definitely had a dampening effect on my inhabitions (mispelt?).

[Dan Steely]

I just remembered the original gateway drug. We probably all did this with our friends as little kids. It's when you put your arms out and spin around and around until you get really dizzy and fall down laughing.

[Chipper]

Those were the daze (sic)! I had the greatest childhood and used to roll down a hill to get that same effect. I've since learn't that the quality of your childhood has little to do with one's drug career.

[nodrover]

Just like blow ball said; weed was the first drug I tried, but I was always interested in trying other drugs. Seriously I was this little ass kid goin on Erowid all the time looking drugs up.....and I would go into school askin around and all that...........lol....I was a total seeker, I wasn't the victim of a gateway drug.

[nodrover]

Originally Posted by Morfiend

marijuana being illegal causes you to meet people who sell other things/use other things as well. I think if you could purchase marijuana at a store or grow it legally, the correlation between marijuana and say opiate use would be no different than cigarettes and opiate use.

+1 sir!