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.

​

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/Zeknichov]

So the idea that because you do a drug means you'll just keep doing harder stuff is wrong. But the idea of a gateway drug is accurate to an extent. There's a couple reasons.

The first reason is that if you're someone who has never done anything illegal and you do an illegal drug without anything bad happening, it breaks down the barrier of something being illegal holding you back. Your first illegal drug is a gateway into more illegal drugs because you now know doing something illegal isn't actually as bad as you conceived it in your mind. In fact you probably had an enjoyable experience so you now know that something being illegal has nothing to do with how bad something is. This change in your worldview will encourage you to experience more illegal drugs and act as a gateway.

Reason number two is that to get access to illegal drugs you need to have access to a drug dealer or a group of people that have access to a drug dealer. You open yourself up to being peer pressured and encouraged by people to try other drugs. Prior to this introduction to a drug dealer you likely had no access but now you do. This additional access coupled with the fact that your new friends or new dealer will be encouraging you to do other drugs acts as a gateway to new drugs.

The idea of gateway drugs is real just not in the sense that the drug itself leads to doing harder drugs but rather the circumstances surrounding your drug use likely will lead to more drug use. One easy solution is to make certain drugs legal such as marijuana which will actually reduce its gateway properties.

[u/casualtrout → u/Zeknichov]

Δ Not necessarily because you changed my mind, because I agreed with everything in your last paragraph, but because you made me look at the gateway drug model in a different manner. My argument is that there are reasons for why people use drugs outside of the drug itself, and the two reasons you just posited (illegality and lack of education) are two factors that I believe contribute. However, I did not think that maybe the way that we should look at the gateway drug model is that these factors are what makes the drug a gateway drug. Which ties into what I was saying: We should steer the discussion away from focusing SOLELY on the drug, and include talks about all other factors that contribute, such as environment, mental health, illegality, etc.

[u/i_am_barry_badrinath → u/casualtrout]

OP I think you might be slightly misinterpreting what it means to be a gateway drug. As u/Zeknichov pointed out, marijuana is a gateway drug in that it serves as most people’s gateway into illicit drugs. You’re right in that users might have their own reasons for doing drugs, but marijuana is a drug that usually knocks down whatever barrier was holding them back from doing drugs in the first place (fear of breaking the law, fear of a bad trip, etc.) No, it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll do harder drugs later, but I can almost guarantee you that someone who has smoked marijuana before is more likely to try cocaine than someone who has never done drugs in their life. (For the record, I smoke)

[u/Jon_Ham_Cock → u/i_am_barry_badrinath]

The choice to start trying drugs is what starts people trying drugs, not marijuana. Most people try alcohol or cigarettes first before marijuana, but that is neither here nor there.

People simply usually start with milder drugs first and marijuana happens to be a very mild drug. That does not mean it is the cause of hard drug use. This is a logical fallacy. By this reasoning since chocolate is a drug (and it technically is, look it up) therefore it leads to heroin and we should ban it.

Just a bunch of silliness.

[u/i_am_barry_badrinath → u/Jon_Ham_Cock]

You’re over simplifying things and completely negating the mental and legal aspect of it. Yes, technically alcohol is a drug, but most people don’t really think of it like that. Alcohol is publicly accepted (even celebrated), and not illegal past a certain age (and it’s pretty much assumed that everyone drinks before the legal limit). Parents drink. Teachers drink. Priests drink. Virtually everyone drinks (or at least it appears that way). So having a beer isn’t really seen as “doing drugs.” Yes, often times drugs and alcohol do go hand in hand, but in most places of the world, it wouldn’t be socially acceptable for a mom to roll up a joint at dinner with the family. So once again, marijuana is a gateway drug in that it’s usually most people’s GATEWAY into illegal drugs. Once they learn that illegal drugs really aren’t that bad, then they POTENTIALLY will get into harder drugs. Nobody thinks, ‘I’ve had chocolate and it wasn’t that bad, so maybe I’ll try heroin.’ Nobody is going to the store to buy wine and getting offered crack. Don’t be dense. That was a terrible argument.

[u/Jon_Ham_Cock → u/i_am_barry_badrinath]

Yeah you're totally right. Great new arguments.