The gateway drug theory

The gateway drug theory, stoner PR and COPS.

There are no gateway drugs, stoners need a make-over and COPS...well...



It's interesting now that I think about it but many of my strong beliefs took root when I was still fairly young. I can remember scoffing at the idea of marijuana as a gateway drug when I was 16. If you wanted to point a finger at something and say it was my 'gateway' to my personal drug experience it would be cigarettes as they came first and believe it or not while I was in the 3rd grade. Peer pressure and ease of access where the aggravating factors in my initial cigarette use. They were less than $0.60 a pack, I ran to the store for mom sometimes when she or the BF was out of smokes and was hardly ever hassled about buying a pack back then. I could get smokes any time I wanted just like every other kid.

Then came alcohol. Booze was even easier to get for children of all ages back then because liquor cabinets were stocked and unlocked baby. There are to this day a few airline bottles of the hard stuff that have had pure New Jersey tap water sitting in them 30 years later, STILL looking unopened, sitting in my mother's liquor cab.

Naturally you can only get away with so much watering down dad's booze before he'll notice so that's where older brothers/sisters came in. The drinking age was 18 (or lower in some places I think) everywhere so again much easier for younger adults to get than it is now and most of the time if you were paying they didn't mind buying.

No I'd been smoking cigarettes for years and had been drunk more than once way before I ever tried pot. I had always believed the fear mongering and although I knew cigarettes were no good for you we also knew it took years to have that effect and "I'd quit long before any effects would become reversable...". Yeah right. No I said no to drugs long before Nancy did. I had been offered a taste of this or a snort of that quite a few times before I was 15 and I never ever felt pressured to do them. I turned them down without fail, and even in the rare instance where the "peer" was calling me a pussy or goading me to do it I never let it affect me. I realized early on that some people like to manipulate others just to see what they can get them to do and at an early age decided I was going to make my own decisions. "Peer pressure" has had little effect on me since, specially when it comes to what I will and will not put in my body.

Nobody I knew started with marijuana. It was either cigarettes or booze or both so the idea that pot was a gateway drug only half held water in my eyes back then. Then one day I smoked a joint of something VERY sticky and thought about it a bit and realized that while many factors play a role in weather or not an individual tries illicit drugs the main factor at play is personality type.

Drug taking, like activities such as sky-diving or motorcycle racing or even Alaskan crab fisherman are all risk taking activities. It takes a certain type of personality to even want to do some of these things. There are those who would turn down doing any of them for any amount of money because they don't have what it takes personality wise to do it.