Gateway Drug Misunderstood

Here is good article which agrees with my opinion on how misunderstood Marijuana is as a "gateway" drug.

Marijuana, as a drug, doesn't influence users into taking harder drugs. The environment and people that marijuana users interact with, as a result of marijuana being an illicit drug, does.

Or from the article:

"...The researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs." In other words, the gateway isn't marijuana; it's laws that put marijuana into the same criminal underground with speed and heroin."

If you outlawed viagra, it would also become a "gateway drug". Or caffeine. Or probably even paracetemol. Why can't people seem to see this logic, even when it is backed up by the stats and research. Drug dealers and tycoons don't want marijuana legalised, it's the last thing they want. Anymore than the mob wanted alcohol un-abolished. It totally undoes their business.

If you want to understand how drugs affect the brains chemical pathways, including pathways to addiction here some cool flash interactive fun: Mouse Party. It's all about neurotransmitters and reward pathways and such like.

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