"Critics have long denounced marijuana as a gateway drug to riskier substances. Some day it could be considered a life-saving one."
That denunciation only ever came from people with low life experience and oversimplified mental models of "bad".
That denunciation only ever came from people with low life experience and oversimplified mental models of "bad".
Most users of harder drugs indicate past use of marijuana. Additionally, marijuana gives many their first taste of doing business with drug dealers and 'breaks their cherry.' When they decide they want to try something else they have already gained experience locating dealers and engaging with them. Legalizing cannabis helps here because its users won't engage with dealers to score, they'll go to the store and buy a regulated product.
But, the gateway drug idea was itself used as an argument against legalization.
We need to be careful with logic problems like, "Most users of harder drugs indicate past use of marijuana."
All users of all drugs report drinking water in the last 12 weeks.
These kinds of statements don't mean anything, but they sound important to the average reader.
Correlation != Causation
It's definitely a gateway drug, but only from the perspective that you've forced people to establish black market financial connections. Once you've figured out how to get something illegal it opens a whole new world.
Most people who are in hospice indicate they drank water in the past. Is water consumption a gateway to dying?