do you think cannabis is a gateway drug?
 

Heard Stephen A Smith calling cannabis a gateway drug. I just never saw it that way sure, almost every hard drug user "tried it" or "used it" before doing hard drugs however can we honestly say that cannabis facilitates this?

Also, from my own experience, cannabis has ironically helped A LOT of people get CLEAN from hard drug abuse and STAY clean.

What is y'all opinions and experiences? Serious question, not just trying to pontificate my own ideas

To be sure, a lot of athletes use cannabis as alternative to opiate pills for pain

alcohol is the gateway drug (if there is such a thing)

Most people I know first get intoxicated with alcohol, specifically beer.

Having said that, most people drink milk before they try heroin, so milk must be the true gateway drug.

It takes a certain type of human, usually one with an addictive personality, to try herb and then think, "Oh! This is great! I am now gonna try cocaine, heroin, PCP, ketamine, hydrocodone...."

Agreed, my opinion always was that people move on to drugs because cannabis just didn't do that job. They aren't chasing a new high, its that cannabis never gave them the high they actually wanted. Addicts gonna be addicts. The premise of the gateway theory is that somehow cannabis induces people to do other drugs as an inevitability. That somehow cannabis was an introduction to their addiction. However im not sure that we can say there is a direct causality so much as correlation.

yep. Most people that do heroin/opiatesd do so to numb mental and physical trauma/pain.

Most people who do cocaine do so to feel euphoric and energetic

Most people who do speed are the same.

Herb is a hallucinogenic with analgesic properties. Those who seek only to get "Wasted" eventually tire of eating large amounts of pot brownies or progress through schwag to kind bud to hash/butter to hash oil really quickly, if at all, because they are not seeking what the herb can provide....

i don't know what's a "gateway drug" but there sure are gateway friends/people.

i suppose is that if you break the law to get your weed and start hanging out with dealers etc you may get more involved in other illegal shit. sure. it can happen when weed is criminalized.

but it's not the weed itself that does it-- it's the getting involved with crime.

during prohibition, beer was a gateway drug. during famines, black-market rice is the gateway drug too i suppose.

jean valjean stole a loaf of bread and was sentenced to five years in prison. every time he tried to escape they increased his sentence. gateway bread!

I agree completely which is why i mentioned a correlation. Also the fact that getting cannabis from black market which exposes people to shady situations is a tenet of legalization advocacy.

right.

but thinking about it more from the other side ("substance a induces use of substances b, c, d = truth"), then i'd have to say: if there is one legally available and socially sanctioned drug that causes disinhibition, impulsiveness and bad judgment, and is a major factor in all manner of unnecessary risk-taking from vehicular to genital to pharmacological to pugilistic-- that's definitely alcohol.

not that i'd ever advocate prohibition, or that i subscribe to the gateway theory. but if there ever was a gateway drug in this planet, then that's definitely the one.

Legalise it!

we have the legal in Oregon now, I grew 4 plants, 4' tall and full of flowers!

Bullshit. Total. Fucking. Bullshit.

Have any of yall seen similar experience of hard drugs users actually getting and staying clean in part because of having cannabis to help?

I was told pot would ruin my life.

I smoked anyway. Didn't die.

Wondered what else they were lying about and proceeded to try just about every other drug in the next few years.

So, either pot was a gateway drug or we can blame anti-drug propaganda.

But really, addiction is so misunderstood: for some people it is gateway drug. For others, no.

Kind of like how: For some, it is psychologically addictive. For others, not.

There are very few across-the-board answers for this stuff, a situation most humans find very uncomfortable.

the real gateway drug is refined sugar. Here kiddies, eat this and feel WOW!! and it tastes good! Take a substance and feel good. Then you get caffeine in soda. OoH! I feel great and I didn't die! Woohoo! Whats next! mix the caffeine and sugar together in soda or coffee.

Sugar was the first global drug trade. It is a major component of the Atlantic Slave Trade.. its largely why Europe colonized the Americas.. so yeah.

I can agree with this, that its not cannabis which is the gateway but rather the propaganda and manipulation surrounding prohibition. When folks find out they were lied to about cannabis they must naturally wonder if the other drug warnings were similar distortions

Dude i work with teenagers, they are totally that stupid. Remember, everybody always assumes "it won't be me".. people who smoke say, "i won't get cancer." People who drink and drive say "i won't get in an accident" and yes, many people who start experimenting with drugs say, "i won't become an addict."

I would almost say cannabis doesn't even get you "high" the way drugs can. Cannabis gets you euphoric, hungry, and sleepy. Drugs get you high. Its why i just can't take doses anymore.. too strong.. too overwhelming

I don't even think they "feel good" but they are so thoroughly overpowering. You are not yourself on drugs.. Indeed its why Hunter Thompson said, "You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug."

how so?

It's a gateway to yr skull.

it was the last drug i tried, actually (of all the drugs i've tried.) it just never appealed to me, and i didn't like the way it made me feel. of course, didn't stop me from smoking daily for a period anyways (more a social thing than anything; i gained weight and quit.)

outdoor grow harvested this week, 4 plants 5' high average and full of flowers. Love the legality

ay que rico

I don´t think cannabis is a gateway drug. I have never used it myself, but I have quite many friends who have used it 10-20 years and never started to use any harder drugs. I believe specially these days there are lots of people who start use amphetamine, LSD or ecstacy without ever using cannabis.

A gateway to evolution. By definition, evolution only takes place when an mutation is selected.

Smoking cannabis can alter a person's DNA, causing mutations that expose a user to serious illnesses, experts have warned
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ng-cancer.html

sure. nevermind the additives in yr food and the water you drink. maybe those people live and think negative lives.

yes and no

alcohol is the true "gateway" drug.

Probably refined sugar is the real gateway substance.

man, i just found about Bill Hicks today. he is/was great. and i do feel like light up one.

Bill Hicks: This Is Why Your Kids Do Drugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1VbD5hq1Bs

bill hicks is the shit. that dude knew the truth

ok so i took doses since posting this... was definitely strong not too overwhelming. likely to do it again if i can manage to clear 12-18 hours plus sleep on my calendar

you talking weed? breeds from your part of the world must be modified into max. perfection. yeah, I would think twice as well. what about some light, energetic strains (haha...yeah right...are there any like that?).

Doubt it. I'm pretty sure he's talking about 'cid. I haven't done it since I dropped with my girlfriend. She can't handle that stuff...

There aren't. I mean... Everyone seems to be under the impression that different strains are like different substances. From my experience, the writin-group variance is roughly equivalent to the difference between coffee roasts and brews. There may be some different flavors and overtones from strain to strain, but if it's THC and you're smoking it, the same basic thing is going to happen in your brain every time.

Even now, in my (mumble)-thirties, I have friends who insist that "it all depends on the strain." Seems infantile and naive to me. Like buying into a marketing tactic. People seem to be convinced that some kinds of weed feel like cocaine, and make you ultra focused and energetic, while others reproduce the kind of pure euphoria that opiates and benzodiazepines bring on. It just doesn't work like that. The big difference in determining how you're going to react to THC lies mostly in how much THC you ingest. If you do it every day, you're going to react much differently than someone who smokes ounces a year, or les than that.

I guess I could be wrong... maybe there's a world of difference between strains, and I'm just a dipshit. But I don't think so. To hear people talking about it, you'd think THC is the most versatile psychotropic known to man, and that's certainly not the case.

However, I did just learn about these exciting "new" electronic cigarette-like doohickeys that run on a battery and burn hash oil. I don't tend to respond well to THC... haven't since I stopped smoking it every day... But these little doohickeys seem pretty down.

Yeah, seemed like he was talking about acid to me.

I have not dropped in a very very long time. Probably never will again. I've heard interesting things about microdosing, but when you've had the kinds of acid experiences I have, you don't just take a little and go to work and expect that everything will be fine. Cause I've seen the backs of my eyeballs from space, and there's no way I'm fucking around with any amount of that shit unless I have complete control over my environment.

Severian.. there are ELEVEN psychoactive chemicals that occur only in cannabis, and about 80 chemicals that only occur in cannabis. the ratio and differing levels of these cannabinoids determines the psychoactive effect. the differing strains and also differing curing methods cause different "highs".. its not merely "marketing" is neurochemistry.

THC is the most psychoactive but the other ten chemicals play their roles. the "energetic" strains have less of the "sleepy" chemicals. some of these more so impact pain receptors, CBD oils and tinctures used as legit medicine aim for extracts of these different cannabinoids for different uses

suchfrendsaredangerous knows his stuff severian. i mean i remember some strains would completly fuck you up and some would be so lighter an energetic like that you could actually be active while intoxicated ( i must admit, not that many of that sort i came across, ehrm). yeah and then, some are extra ultra fucking 18 hrs. out of order. where are you from again suchfriends? la? have you talked about acid or weed? anyway. those days you can get strains so modified they are not natural like anymore. you have to have a day off and no plans...true

acid? o.k. that is for another thread. those days are over for me same like for severian. it does open yr mind and make you more spiritual alright. it is good tho.

by the way ganja should be mandatory for everyone at least for once in his/her lifetime! could be gateway alright. but still...