[TheRealThing]

The only thing that makes marijuana a gateway drug is the fact that the same dealers that peddle pot, peddle the other drugs. If it is made legal, and available, without dealers pushing the harder stuff, the gateway goes away. There is nothing with pot, in and of it's self, that makes it a gateway drug, other than the "dealer" part. What makes a drug a gateway drug is if continued use weakens it's effect on people, and they look for something to get that "high" back. After years of smoking pot, you still get the same high, therefore, it isn't a gateway drug in it's self.

You know, you might be able to get away with blowing all this smoke (pun intended) if you weren't talking to people who are in every way your equal. But, you are. Not only is marijuanna a gateway drug, it is THE gateway drug. I can tell you first hand that pot smokers have waaay fewer inhibitions than do their peers as a general rule. People who smoke pot are more reckless on a personal level and more willing to cross social and legal lines to entertain themselves. Citizens of the drug culture sort of share a certain commonality or understanding among them. LET'S PARTY! Anywhere, anytime, and with anybody.

To a large degree it is the American taxpayer who yet again finds himself being stuck with the bill for all these revelries. Pot smokers like to party, they stay up late and let the dogs howl every darn night, (and day). Consequently, they don't like to work and, because our government has decided to buy all of our citizen's problems through ill-advised liberal give away programs resultant of federal policy making such as "Great Society" measures, they don't have to. They just party and eat and make babies. And, those left among us who live responsibly are forced to subsidize their depraved lifestyles with our 'extorted' tax dollars. Such federally protected and therefore legislated folly represents a major contributing factor to our national debt, and helps to explain what ever happened to the personal integrity that once compelled all Americans to get out of bed in the morning and go to work to support their families.

Pot smoking is far from harmless.