The Real "Gateway" Drugs

Weed is not a gateway drug.  If such a thing exists, that honor goes to caffeine, alcohol & tobacco, which are generally tried LONG before cannabis due to their wide availability & the way they're promoted and advertised to young people. 

Caffeine and tobacco are stimulants and alcohol is a depressant.  While caffeine isn't as deadly as the other two, it is physically addictive and causes painful withdrawal symptoms upon cessation such as headache, fatigue, cravings & irritability.  Tobacco is the most addictive drug perhaps known to man, harder to quit than cocaine, amphetamine or heroin according to a 1987 Surgeon General's report.  Even with all the patches, gums, vapes and other nicotine products to help people quit, it remains one of the hardest drugs to stop, which is why it's often allowed in drug detox and inpatient rehab centers.  And like alcohol, it's a Group I carcinogen known to cause 13+ types of cancer among other serious health problems.  It's the only drug I've encountered that will leave you talking through a hole in your neck.  Yet like alcohol, it's unscheduled & remains available over the counter to anyone 18 or older.  

Alcohol is the true gateway drug in that it drastically alters mood and thinking.  In low doses it produces euphoria and relaxation--in higher doses, loss of coordination, memory loss, slurred speech, impaired judgment & unpredictable mood changes that may include happiness, rage or depression.  In overdose it causes total blackout & amnesia, respiratory depression & vomiting which can result in aspiration and death.

Alcohol is involved in nearly HALF of all violent crimes in the U.S. (see stats below) as well as a significant portion of car accidents & other forms of accidental self-injury.  The World Health Organization has recently proclaimed that there is NO safe type or amount of alcohol for anyone, as it's toxic to every cell of the body even at minuscule doses.  It's the only recreational drug with its own "syndrome" in pregnancy, making it the most toxic drug to ingest while pregnant.  It even causes its own uniquely horrific brand of psychosis and dementia (Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome).

via Google

Despite this, cannabis constantly stays in the news cycle as a "gateway drug" that causes psychosis and all other manner of social ills.  While no substance is without its issues when abused or taken by the wrong cohort (i.e. children or the severely mentally ill), this fear-mongering just hasn't proven true in the real world despite millennia of use all over the world.  The same is true of kratom, another plant drug that's not profitable to any "big" industry in its whole natural form (but VERY profitable when its individual components are isolated, patented & sold back to us after the plant is banned).  To be clear, I'm talking about the plain leaf being used by healthy adults, not potent extracts guzzled by kids & poly-substance addicts.  Same with whole unadulterated cannabis, not the insanely potent extracts, vape oils & other "crackish" forms with virtually no history of human use before 2012.

ABC's "Will & Kate" interview came before exposing child sex predator Epstein.

Who Shapes the Narrative?

Might it be that these legal drug industries are the ones pushing all this anti-drug hysteria?  We know it's "the media" behind the fear-mongering every time a new drug hits the streets, but who advertises & sponsors the news media?  Lots of industries, among them alcohol, big pharma, junk food (sugar) & caffeine-pushing  companies.  While individual journalists may be well-intentioned, the news stations themselves are armed with teams of legal advisors who kill stories before they even get started if they smell potential lawsuits or problems with sponsors. 

This affects all kinds of stories, not just drug-related ones.  The Epstein scandal was common knowledge among journalists years before it became public knowledge as evidenced by this hot mic moment with ABC's Amy Robach, who discussed her interview with Prince Andrew survivor Virginia Giuffre and being "threatened a million different ways" by the Palace when they found out about the interview & allegations.  If you wonder why topics like climate change, the Palestinian genocide & our scammy for-profit healthcare system rarely make headlines, you can thank the corporate media which doubles as the propaganda arm of the State Department... when not doing the bidding of their corporate sponsors.

No, friends, the true "gateway drugs" are untreated mental illness, childhood trauma, hopeless/stressful environments & a genetic predisposition to addiction--not any one substance or event.  But IF we were going to pin that title on any drug, it makes sense to give it to the first drug(s) tried by a person, which in a vast majority of cases is not cannabis.  The obvious solution is to do everything in your power to keep kids--YOUR kids--from using substances of any kind until they're legal adults when they can make the decisions for themselves, not to strip away rights from consenting adults en masse which obviously doesn't work anyway judging by the availability of highly potent, toxic substances on every street corner, gas station and website in America, not to mention the appalling overdose/addiction rates in said country which dwarf those of every other nation on Earth.