Not really. Pot changed personalities and mental acuteness. Alcohol was a weekend drunk but Ok afterwards. I know of a few alcoholics over t, he yearsbut none personally. I lost a cousin who started with pot in high school and graduated to harder stuff later in life and was an OD. There is an epidemic of hard drug users in our community now and all of whom I am aware started on pot. In my morning coffee group of old guys we often talk on he subject. Some of their family are involved. I guess the change in life style among pot users is something we all recognize.
None of them ever drank?
“RESULTS: Results from the Guttman scale indicated that alcohol represented the “gateway” drug, leading to the use of tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit substances. Moreover, students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood of using both licit and illicit drugs.” - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22712674
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Legalized states are doing better overall than prohibition states with regard to ODs. Oregon, for example, had a decline in deaths between 2010 and 2016. You have to go all the way down to the 32nd position among the states in the graphic below before you get to a legalized state (Alaska). From the CDC =>
source => https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/images/data/2010_2016DrugOverdose-Deaths-Graphic.JPG
The concept of pot as a gateway drug has been thoroughly discredited.
I've found at a quick search that 55 million adults currently use marijuana. Can you admit to yourself and us that there is not 55 million adults currently using hard drugs? For it to be a "gateway drug" the gate seems very narrow.
The only connection between marijuana and hard drugs is that a person who is willing to violate the law by using marijuana, soon finds out that nothing bad happened to him. He therefore is willing to try some other drug because he knows from personal experience that he was lied to by "the powers that be" about the so called harmful effects of marijuana. Understanding that youth feel invincible and all that. It isn't the marijuana that is the gateway, but the illicitness that is the gateway. Decriminalizing marijuana stops it from being a gateway.
I smoked weed 45 years ago. I stopped, got married, enlisted, held a Top Secret Security Clearance (yes, I full disclosed my illicit drug history through the Human Reliability Program), was honorably discharged, worked for ITT, Sprint, MCI/Verizon and retired after 31 years at Verizon. I have run like a scalded dog from marijuana for the past 45 years because it is illegal and I didn't want to ruin my life with a police record.
As a former head freak, I can tell you I am a better person for my past experiences and alcohol affects individuals and society much worse than marijuana on a personal and societal level.