Marijuana is a Gateway Drug

                If there was one accusation that has demonized marijuana more than anything else it has to be the “Gateway Drug” argument. This has been a popular argument and one of the most successful in keeping marijuana illegal. One of the reasons contributed to its success is that it utilizes fear to scare voters into keeping it illegal. However, this fear can be alleviated with simple reasoning that disproves marijuana is a gate way drug.

There is some ambiguity about the gateway drug theory and this causes it to be described in a couple of ways. This same ambiguity can also lead to its downfall in a civil debate. This argument has been described a number of ways in its existence but the way I remember being told had to be the most absurd. I was taught that marijuana is a gateway drug because people who smoke it for a long enough time stop getting high from it which leads them to move to more powerful drugs. Where do we start with this one? There is no drug in existence, legal or otherwise, that a human being can build such a tolerance to that they stop feeling all or most of the effects that it causes. There is no illicit drug, prescription drug, or legal drug like alcohol or nicotine that behaves this way. Caffeine doesn’t even do it, so why would marijuana be any different? This argument is so farfetched that it can be excused with simple reasoning.

The gateway theory is popular among prohibitionists because it uses statistics. However these people neglect the other variables that have to be taken into account. Many prohibitionists bring up the point that people who use harder drugs started with marijuana. Now I’ll admit that this statistic is somewhat true, but, you can make the very same argument about alcohol. Many people used alcohol roughly around the same time they started using marijuana. Very few actually started on just marijuana before they moved on to harder drugs. This is especially true with under aged people. People who drink under aged are far more likely to use illegal drugs in their lifetime. So we can make the argument that alcohol itself is a “gateway” drug using the same statistics and reasoning as the prohibitionists to support our claim. Why is alcohol ignored though? There are a few reasons but one of the main ones is how the statistical questions are presented. Many ask the question “what drug did you first start out with” or some other similar variant. On the surface this seems like a fair question, but it all depends on what the word “drug” means to the person being surveyed. Alcohol itself is a drug, but when asked about “drugs” it’s hardly the first one that comes to most people’s minds. When asked the question “what drug did you first use or start with” many people automatically think of illegal drugs which alcohol is not associated with. In this way the statistics can become incredibly skewed and therefore it becomes invalid in an argument. The problem with these statistical arguments is that the statistics themselves are flawed. Until there is a better statistical system in place we will never really know if marijuana (or alcohol for that matter) is a gateway drug.

I have my own “gateway” theory that I would like to introduce for the first time on this blog. I feel that this theory better addresses the true underlying cause of hard drug use. The gateway is not the drug itself, but it is the illegal activity that is associated with the drug. A person buying marijuana off of a drug dealer is exposed to the other hard drugs that the dealer also sells. It becomes a “gateway” to illegal activity. The dealer will eventually convince someone to buy harder and more profitable drugs. The buyer is already breaking the law by buying marijuana several times, and this repeated action can seem benign to him over time. Since the buyer is no longer afraid of purchasing marijuana then what would stop him from buying other drugs? He is introduced to an illegal drug culture which becomes a gateway into harder illicit drug use.

You may be asking yourself why a person would take part in an illegal activity in the first place. We can address this question by looking at another study that observes drinking at universities. Many universities have done studies to determine which students attending their schools drink the most. What these studies found was very intriguing. The majority of students that drank alcohol were in the freshmen and sophomore classes whose age range is 17-20. Junior and senior classes whose ages range from 21-23 were far less likely to drink. Why would under aged people drink more? The fact is that there is an appeal to something that is forbidden. People who drink underage usually feel the excitement of getting away with something that they are not supposed to take part in. Once they become of legal age to drink, the excitement of doing something forbidden is gone and drinking loses the appeal that it once had. Buying and using marijuana can bring about the same exciting “forbidden” feeling. This feeling introduces them into an illegal lifestyle that could lead to harder drug use. The forbidden feeling is constantly fed while taking part in this activity, and this causes people to push themselves into harder drug use in order to maintain the excitement the activity brings about. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in America, so if we were to make it a legal substance then we would take all of those marijuana users away from an introduction into an illegal lifestyle. By doing this we greatly reduce the chance that these marijuana users will take part in harder drug use.

Let’s face it; marijuana is a gateway drug because it is illegal. If it were legalized then people would not be introduced into an illegal culture that could lead to harder drug use, thereby protecting our citizens. By keeping this plant illegal we are allowing drug pushers to introduce our citizens to harder drugs like heroin. Let’s take the illegal lifestyle out of the equation by making marijuana a legal substance.