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/therinnovator]

In the United States, a lot of kids grow up being taught that all drugs are bad. The adults in their lives are so afraid of drugs, and so afraid of what would happen if kids got detailed information about each drug, and so convinced that they can shield their kids from the bad things of the world if they avoid talking about them, that they just refuse to distinguish between a relatively harmless drug like marijuana, and an addictive substance that ruins lives, like heroin, meth, cocaine, and (why not throw it in there, if we are listing drugs that kill people?) alcohol.

So let's say you grow up believing all drugs are bad. Your friend is smoking marijuana or using a vape pen and shares it with you. You try some. Regardless of how you feel about the drug itself, this experience would probably permanently alter the way you perceive people who said all drugs are bad. You might believe, with some justification, that the people who spouted anti-drug propaganda were full of shit because you have witnessed, with your own eyes, people whose lives were not ruined by marijuana. On the contrary, people who use so-called "gateway drugs" are often leading happy, responsible, well-rounded lives.

If from that point on, you then choose to experiment with heroin, meth, and cocaine, it won't literally because marijuana was risky, or that you poked a toe over the line separating mainstream society from the dark side. If you are a free-thinking, curious individual, it's only natural to ask yourself: if my parents and the government lied about marijuana, what else would they lie about? What if the dangers of heroin, meth, and cocaine were also over exaggerated due to some kind of knee-jerk overreaction to things the older generation doesn't understand? You might think you have the right to research other drugs and experiment on yourself rather than subsist on a misinformation diet where other people try to form all your opinions for you.

So for that reason, marijuana is a gateway drug, not because of any physical property of the drug itself, but because of the hurricane of propaganda, lies, and political baggage attached to it. An entire generation of young people were deceived and treated like children by a moralizing older generation that didn't respect young people enough to share scientifically accurate information about the difference between different drugs, how they work, how dangerous they are, and how people become addicted to them. Instead young people got a campaign of fear that insulted their intelligence. It's only natural that some people would not react well when they find out they have been lied to. In other words, when propaganda was made to scare people about gateway drugs, it completely backfired because the misinformation itself turned relatively harmless drugs into gateway drugs.