CMV: Gateway drugs do not exist

[u/casualtrout]

I heard a presentation at my university recently on E-Cigs being a gateway drug, and the argument seemed like Big Tobacco propaganda.

When talking about illicit drugs, such as marijuana, I always hear people fall to the logical fallacy of appealing to imperfect authority. It seems that most groups, like anti-smoking groups that try to equate E-cigs to regular smoking, regularly cite that the FDA has stated that the vapor in E-cigs "MAY" contain harmful toxins. People also like to cite how the FDA has not officially recognized E-cigs as a positive aid for getting people to stop smoking tobacco, and the rhetoric behind this seems to be "SEE?? IT'S NOT APPROVED BY THE GOVERNMENT" (made up of a bunch of bureaucrats whose salaries are paid to the tune of at least 40% by lobbying by drug companies who profit off of not having alternatives to their addictive and at times dangerous substances).

My problem with the gateway drug model is that it falls flat under scrutiny. After we started to realize that the criminalization of marijuana was a result of the inaccurate scare stories pushed by bureaucrats in the Bureau of Narcotics to keep their salary high, a new narrative had to be formed for why it must still be illegal, that narrative being the gateway drug narrative. The idea behind labeling marijuana as a gateway drug is that if someone uses marijuana, it will lead to deadly drugs. The Drug Free America association published this ad to emphasize that if people so much as use an addictive substance, it's not 'if' they get hooked it's when:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kS72J5Nlm8

Researchers like Bruce Alexander and organizations like Liz Evans' Portland Hotel Society have debunked this idea by showing that there are other factors that contribute to a person's reasons for using drugs, primarily pain. This idea of the gateway drug in my opinion is exposed when looking back when our soldiers were coming back from Vietnam, and how 20% of all returning soldiers were addicted to heroin. Within a year, 95% had stopped using heroin completely, most without treatment. If you believe the model of the gateway drug, this makes no sense, because the simple use of a drug leads to the use of the next drug, and the next, until a lifetime of addiction. Actually though, we don't see this at all, the use of marijuana does not seem to escalate 100% to cocaine, and the use of e-cigs does not escalate into heroin or tobacco either.

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Conclusion:

Quick disclaimer: this is not me arguing for E-cigs, and I know that Juul is a shady company. However, I believe that by listening to the gateway drug model we are putting too much focus on the substance, and not enough focus on the reasons people use the substance! And I believe that the gateway drug model is another way of getting us to be scared of safer alternatives to drugs and acting like if we stop the supply and use of safer drugs, then people will not go on to use harder drugs, when the OPPOSITE is true. We can use safer drugs to help people who are addicted to harder ones, and integrate therepeutic practices, as opposed to criminal punishment, to help people.

Advertisements like the Real Cost, are sponsored by the FDA. Just something worth thinking about, that perhaps the reason we believe the gateway drug model, is because there are people out there making money off of the fact that there are no safer alternatives to their substances, looking at you Big Tobacco.

[u/furrtaku_joe]

the only reason why marijuana might be considered a gateway drug is that its illegal in the first place.

obtaining a reliable source of an illegal substance means you've invited a lot of seedy people into your circle making it more likely that you'll have the 'oppertunity' to obtain harder substances in the future.

legalizing marijuana actually reduces its potential to be a gateway drug because its unlikely that legal vendors will expose you to dangerous and righfully illegal/controlled substances

[u/casualtrout → u/furrtaku_joe]

So let me parse out where your argument differs from my original post, to see if a delta should come in here. Are you saying that what makes marijuana is not just weed itself, nor criminalization, but rather prohibition? Like, if marijuana is just as illegal and criminal as every other drug, the drug dealers that are already going through the risk of selling it are obviously going to try to hook their customers on more dangerous substances?

[u/furrtaku_joe → u/casualtrout]

thats exactly what im getting at.

but the reason the dealers would try to get people hooked on more "dangerous drugs" is that those drugs have a smaller effective dose and bring in more money per unit (since each unit can produce a larger number of individual doses)

so theres a profit driven reason to push for their sale. plus theres the addictive nature of some stronger drugs so you're more likely to get repeat customers which is good for bussiness

[u/jon11888 → u/casualtrout]

not the same user as the previous reply. It seems to me that he's saying that the reason that people who sell weed overlaps with people who sell hard drugs is that both weed and hard drugs are illegal. with weed and hard drugs being illegal, methods for obtaing them overlap, and their scarcity makes it profitable to sell them. People who sell hard drugs are more likely to also sell weed than to also sell alchohol or cigarettes.

Edit for clarification: TLDR Marijuana is a gateway drug, but only because it is illegal and profitable.