The way my daughter's middle school health class classifies drugs is insane.
Marijuana is its own special category, but club drugs (which for some reason include date rape drugs), inhalants and steroids are all in a "miscellaneous" category together?
Also, note all the ridiculous drug propaganda lies.
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Marijuana is not a gateway drug.
Having to deal with a drug dealer that wants to also sell you actually addictive drugs is the gateway.
Legalize pot, sell it at the grocery store, and you will watch the number of addicts in general fall precipitously. I guarantee it.
Weird how cigarettes and alcohol are not 'gateway drugs.'
That's because from a health perspective, alcohol in particular is an "end state drug". It's what you die with. It ruins you. Not as fast as heroine, but just as thoroughly.
So if I just occasionally have a beer with dinner does that mean I could also enjoy a bit of light recreational heroine for dessert?
The best dessert.
Don't forget shampoo!
My D.A.R.E. officer made sure we all knew that shampoo is a drug because it's a chemical compound that physically affects our bodies. I definitely had fewer issues with drugs after learning that I was already a 'drug user'.
I had fewer issues with drugs after doing drugs, having a great time, feeling better the next morning than if I'd had 4 pints of beer.
That's actually a pretty good way to think about it though. Drugs are just chemical compounds and different compounds have different effects on the body.
Are you sure that D.A.R.E officer was not secretly cool?
D.A.R.E. has been proven to increase drug use, so I don't think it was just him. The entire 'scare tactic' just doesn't work.
Yeah, I really wonder who writes these, and what their outlook on their job is. They have to know that the content has some pretty strong omissions or false inclusions there for political reasons.
The "gateway drug" thing was a lie in 1985 and its a lie now.
I buy THC drinks online from 3Chi. I haven't had an urge to try anything harder (in fact, I'm a bit scared of anything that might affect my heart (aside from booze becaus3 we all do at least one very stupid thing), and the only thing I do want to try but only with a good support group around is shrooms).
I wonder what the stats in Canada look like now.
Marijuana is addictive though. Maybe not as addictive as some other things, but pretending it's completely non addictive is disingenuous and misleading. It's more addictive than say LSD or psilocybin for example.
That isn't to say it should remain illegal though. Legalisation has positive benefits even for harder, more addictive substances than marijuana. See the history of alcohol prohibition for example, or the disaster that is the war on drugs.
Clearly marijuana has some serious kind of habituation, and it's equally clear that many people that use marijuana are problem users. Addictive? No, not by any strict definition of addiction, since you won't suffer serious adverse effects if you stop. OTOH, I've known at least as many problem marijuana users as problem drinkers
The question isn't whether Marijuana is habit forming. Obviously for some percentage it is. The question is whether Marijuana use in and of itself encourages or preface additional drug use. My position is that it does not and by legalizing Marijuana we would find that it is the interaction with black market drug dealers which correlates instead.
I would argue that in many ways it does. Marijuana is--or was--illegal. Alcohol is legal, but age restricted. If you are willing to use a substance that is (was) entirely illegal, you are more likely going to be willing to try other drugs that are legitimately addictive, because you've already crossed one of the major hurdles. If alcohol had been illegal for the same amount of time that marijuana had been, then I would agree that alcohol was likely a gateway drug as well.
I'm in favor of de-scheduling marijuana entirely. But I think that it's disingenuous for people to act as though there weren't serious problems with chronic and underage marijuana use.
You're saying that it has nothing to do with marijuana itself that make it a gateway drug, only that we've made it illegal.
That means anything we make illegal is a 'gateway X'.
After a quick search through us history, alcohol was banned around 1920 and lasted for about 13 years. The marijuana ban that we all know of happened, get this, in 1970, and states began pushing back only 3 years after. So, alcohol was banned far longer than marijuana. The d.a.r.e. campaigns and other propoganda coupled with the inability to do scientific studies on the drug created the mass panic. There were not serious problems, other than some politician needing a platform.
...What? The 1970s were 50 years ago. And marijuana was illegal long before it was classified as a schedule 1 drug under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.
You're going to have to provide some source for it being illegal. Arguably, it was contentious in the 30s, but the first official ruling was 1970.
It also seems like you don't understand that it being banned 50 years ago is not the same as it being banned for 50 years.
It was banned in 1970, but 3 years after, states pushed back.
Alcohol was banned in 1920, and 13 years later, it was unbanned.
You are coming across as very emotional about this, but you are showing how little you have researched. I don't have time to bring you up to speed if you are only going to keep your fingers in your ears while you shut your eyes and scream how right you are.
Have a good day.
Dude, it is literally illegal at the federal level at this very moment. If you use marijuana, and you buy a firearm, you are a felon. The ban may not be fully enforced in some states right now, but the feds can, at any moment, and on a whim, go into California and Colorado and arrest every single person working at a dispensary and charge them under federal drug trafficking laws, and send every single one of them to prison for life.
I would ask what you're on, but I'm pretty sure I can guess.
Ironic.
1951-56:
Stricter Sentencing Laws
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html#:~:text=Enactment%20of%20federal%20laws%20(Boggs,fine%20of%20up%20to%20%2420%2C000.
The prohibition was protested long before it was finally repealed.
https://www.mcny.org/exhibition/protesting-prohibition
You do realize that your providing sources for someone else who didn't doesn't make them less emotional, nor my original post "ironic" for not knowing your sources.
I stand by my original post, which was a cursory google search of us history.
Thanks for providing sources.
However, my ultimate point that it was never a gateway drug and bans were consistently protested remains.
Is your point that I'm wrong for not knowing everything because I said "Here's what I found, stop being emotional and show me what you found."?
Good day.
It wasn't, or you're horrible at it.
"when was weed made illegal" produces
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history_of_cannabis_in_the_United_States
This
Which opens with
Which indeed makes your attempt to mock someone for poor research / knowledge very ironic indeed
It's honestly rather ludicrous to still see 60's propaganda being parroted. You're on the internet, dude. There's no need for you to be that ignorant.
I bet it’s a useful plant and that’s why people use it daily.
Oh, guess what, it’s time to take my meds, I’ll be back after a few bong hits before I go back to work.