Alcohol is a gateway drug, too
I’m actually not too pleased with this video—the way I presented my ideas was rhetorically fuzzy and just generally not rigorous—but I made it, so I figured I’d put it up here anyway. Feel free to criticize, I’ll probably agree with you. But I think my larger point still stands: Even if pot smokers are far more likely to use harder drugs than non-pot smokers, drinkers are far more likely to use harder drugs than non-drinkers; therefore, alcohol is also a “gateway drug.” Here’s a link to the polling I mentioned: www.fivethirtyeight.com
Of course then there’s the fact that they don’t care about anyone else. Okay, you can smoke it, it’s legal… but I choose not to smoke.. you have the freedom smoke it anywhere except in restaurants.. ok.. so I have to breathe it everytime you want to smoke it? I think not. Medicinal use only? Okay, lets consider that a high % (I forget exact) but something like 3/4 of all teen smokers get it from legal medicinal pot smokers. Plus society is getting dumber and dumber. Pot is going to help that?
Here in colorado, it legalized for medicinal purposes. What that means is.. you can get it for any excuse (can’t sleep? Ok, here ya go). Literally. So you have to pay yearly to be able to smoke pot. I am for that aspect. Make it more expensive to smoke it.. if nothing else, hopefully that will discourage its usage. Otherwise, legalizing it just because principles. Are we saying we are okay with people using marijuana or not? You say legalize it, so you say its okay.. So.. I lean toward not.
if gun control is increased.. it will only affect those who abide by the law anyway. Anyone who illegal had a gun before is not going to say “oh no, gun control.. here’s all my guns”.. they’ll keep on doing what they were before. Actually if more upstanding citizens had guns and knew how to use them, we’d be safer! Same with marijuana. Legalize it or not, and ppl are going to keep doing it.
I have also heard that Marijuana is a gateway to worse drugs.. Alcohol is gateway to… worse alcohol? Granted a lot of things can go wrong while drunk. I am in a tossup about marijuana legalization.. I consider the argument with gun control.. They want to control everyone of course.. but the argument they give is less crime and all that crap. But those who cause the crime, usually dont use a registered gun. If they do, they’re stupid.
But because culturally MJ is becoming more acceptable in social circles it makes it easier for people to be involved in and be exposed to drug culture. And this in turn could lead to harsher drugs because they are mildly used to that experience already. Alcohol still has mindstate of go to the store pay the teller people see me it doesn’t matter. I could go on but hopefully you see my point.
When one uses marijuana not only have they accepted the risks of taking drugs but now they have also become comfortable with breaking the law. So if you made all drugs legal you could claim that alcohol is just as much as a gateway drug as anything else but what constitutes MJ to be more of a gateway drugs are social factors. The fact that MJ is known socially as a “drug” and alcohol isn’t shows this. Stigmatizing it as a drug causes it to seem harsher whether it is or not to the user.
I’d like you to think about something. I’d say that you could argue any substance is a gateway drug because coffie or ciggarettes contain psychoactive drugs and the fact that you are using drugs may make you more prone to using harder drugs. However, alcohol is not as much as a gateway drug as marijuana because marijuana is illegal. If people drink, smoke, whatever, they have already accepted certain risks but the risk of illegality doesn’t come in with alcohol. Therefore
marijuana is NOT a gateway drug theres no such thing as gateway
I agreed with you up to the point where you said alcohol was more so a gateway drug than marijuana. Also, I believe they both have the possibilities to be a gateway drug, but the only reason alcohol is deemed to be more so a gateway drug than marijuana is mainly due to the legality of the latter. But I do support proposition 9, and almost every idea supporting marijuana.