Legalize it!

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by Sheriff Gonna Getcha

I don't buy the slippery slope argument as one that can honestly be used to oppose legalizing marijuana. First, the biggest gateway drug, if they exist, is alcohol. So, if you don't want to get the ball rolling in the first place, ban alcohol. Weed is usually just the second step in the chain. Second, I smoked weed as a teen, but I never had any compulsion whatsoever to use any "harder" drug and most of my friends felt the same. People who start using crack weren't made dumb by using pot, they used crack because they were dumb to start with.

I think when they say gateway drug when referring to weed, they're mainly talking about how you can get other drugs from the same guys you got the weed from. Or at least get connected through the guys that sold you the weed.

You're 16, and you want booze, you just go sit outside of 7-11 and wait for a shady looking guy to come up and give him money and ask him to buy it for you. But you can't get crack from that guy.

But with weed, you get the weed from a dealer. Then you decide hey maybe I'll try coke, or maybe the dealer pushes you to buy some coke. There's the gateway.

Not to mention that dealers sometimes lace the weed with other addictive drugs to get you to come back.

Now if you legalized weed, it takes away the gateway to other drugs, because now you're not dealing with an unscrupulous dealer. So I'll admit, there's the positive. But the corresponding negative is that legal marijuana will mean companies like Phillip Morris will produce it. And we all know how they lace their tobacco with things to make it more addictive in order to sell more. You can be damn sure they'll do the same thing with weed; and then a little weed in moderation won't be so easy to do. You'll be hard pressed to resist the urge to smoke it a lot more often.