i cannot accept the governments theory that 'cannabis is illegal because it can lead to harder drugs'.

 

in general, harder drugs are not necessarily smoked. they are snorted, injected or swalloed.

 

cigarettes are legal. i can;t think of two drugs that are more identical in form than cigarette smoking, and marijuana (sp) smoking.

 

surely the government, like so many agendas, is just trying to cover the fact that cigs are accepted in society (and making them money), and weed is bad bad bad.

the goverment need too try before critisising,

i disagree with you phil... id have never tried half the [censored] ive done if it wasnt for smoking pot first

im gonna sit on the fence with this one........

 

if i had never done one drug i would never have gone on to trying others,

 

if i had never done drugs before i certainly wouldnt of tried anything along the lines of coke or ket, but because i had, i did try. if that makes any sense!

 

im not saying that people all become users once they have tried it the once, (im certainly not) but if you try one you are more likely to try something else then find out you like it that little bit more than what you were used to!

 

how did you all become recreational users of the substances you are now on?..................through going that one step further and trying it!

 

 

for me though one drug doesn't lead to another drug. i haven't tried certain drugs *because* i've started to use some

 

the only reason i've tried drugs at all is cos 'club culture' is so tied in with it, and the same 'club culture' involves more than 1 type of drug, so it's 'normal' that one becomes more than one. there's a probably a load of drugs involved in other non clubbing pastimes which i won;t do, simply cos they aren't 'normal' to do in clubbing -- anything i take now is unlikely to lead to taking something completely removed from clubbing.

 

also, people start going onto other drugs when they get bored.

 

when i first smoked naturally my mates smoked it, and so did other mates i made friends with but they where also into clubbin so then u can get tied up into the clubbin scene if u want to give it ago and go out with them if u know what i mean

 

 

for me, i was introduced to it by a close family member (my mum) of which if i hadnt of ever been exposed to anything she ever showed me i doubt i would have been doing what i am doing today although i do not fully blame her and believe that ov course there are many ways in which i could of ever been introduced to drugs

[plays devils advocate]

 

i cant understand y they dont ban fags cuz it leads to canabis

 

or ban alcohol cuz it leads to GB

 

[/plays devils advocate]

xpaulax said:

the goverment need too try before critisising,

 

they have tho. they admitted it a year back

Mr_Happy said:

[plays devils advocate]

 

i cant understand y they dont ban fags cuz it leads to canabis

 

or ban alcohol cuz it leads to GB

 

[/plays devils advocate]

 

my point exactly, wiv a little bit extra =P

 

V-O-T-E-S

(from that other thread) there's a logical fallacy called "post hoc" wihch asserts that because one thing follows another that the one thing was caused by the other.

 

most people who do K and G probably drink milk but we don't argue that milk is a gateway to those drugs.

 

i really like food. i used to eat baby food, then graduated to cereal, etc. now i like pasta and chicken. if i hadn't eaten baby food would i never have tried pasta and chicken.

 

is baby food a "gateway food"? surely the notion is ridiculous?

 

alasdair

Edited September 10, 200321 yr by alasdairm

Agreed Alasdair.

 

I reckon the sole reason for this "I wouldn't have tried Y if I hadn't done X first", is because perhaps taking X for the first time took away the stigma of taking illegal drugs.

 

(But does that make it the government's fault for making them illegal...? etc)

But.

If you had never tried your first illegal drug, you would have never broken through the taboo associated with drugs, and never realised the hypocrisy and scare-mongering perpetrated by the government and media.

So in a sense, trying one illegal drug DOES make it easier to try another.

I'd say, if you try drug A, it increases the likelihood of you trying drugs X, Y and Z.

 

However I don't think that drug A is necessarily a gateway, or a cause. But I think once you start taking A, your exposure to other drugs increases. Either through friends, dealers or new people you meet, you start to come across other drugs. Because you tried drug A, it means that your mindset is that drugs are (in a way) okey. So what's to stop you from trying these other ones you now come across? Especially if the drug you were taking first no longer really works (like if you've done too much pills) or if you can't face the awful comedowns (say, coke). You may then turn to something like K or GHB.

 

I'd disagree that recreational or "lifestyle" drugs lead to proper hard drugs like heroin or smack. It seems to me that it's a whole different personality of people who do recreational drugs, to those people who are heroin or smack addicts. Because heroin and smack are so often connected to major social problems, deep poverty, broken dysfunctional families etc, it seems like those drugs are taken out of some sort of desperation, whereas recreational drugs seem to be taken just for fun, or to enhance clubbing experience, or whatever.

 

Could be wrong - certainly not an expert on hard drugs

Agreed Aleksandra. The most worrying thing is when people ignorantly pigeonhole all illegal drugs under the same umbrella (to mix my metaphors). I think there's a world of difference between recreational drugs and "hard" drugs.

 

But I still think that a person who is relatively ignorant of the effects of different drugs, having tried recreational drugs, might be (a little) more likely to try hard drugs because the stigma associated with illegal drugs has now gone.

 

But that is not the fault of any one drug; that is the consequence of "black & white" classification of drugs (illegal versus legal).

FredTheBaddie said:

So in a sense, trying one illegal drug DOES make it easier to try another.

 

yes, but (as obi wan said -- in seroiusness), many things can be true, from a certain point of view.