A San Diego ER is seeing about 37 pot related psychosis patients a DAY

Quite a long time, a whole lot of people started adding stuff to their pot, like cocaine, crack, opium. Then it was designer street drugs like ecstasy, bath salts, hooch, Charlie or C, coke snow, toot, candy, flake, DMT, and dozens more, mostly containing synthetic cathinones or Fentanyl and other stuff that can indeed cause permanent brain damage.

You're depending on someone else to get the dosages right for your size and tolerance level, and that's extremely reckless. It's plain stupid, imo. You don't even want to ask to use someone else's rolling papers or take a hit off their pipe, either, because you never know what that's been treated with. Could be something that breaks your brain or even kills you.

Plus there's myriad pot hybrids that some people just can't handle. Pot isn't just pot anymore, you gotta grow your own if you want pure, or at least know who your buying it from really well so you know if it's been treated.
 
My own family experience with pot is that it had a negative effect on personality, making my sibling act selfishly concerning his children (that he abandoned). That convinced me to stay away from it, even though I had an otherwise wild and drunken lifestyle at the time. I think it was a gateway drug when illegal since you had to purchase it from dealers that usually had other drugs to sell. And you hung out with folks that did other drugs.

Once legal, it probably would not be as much the gateway drug since you eliminate the illegal dealer.
 

probably all those who started using pot started with alcohol.
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...even before alcohol all those future pot users used Sugar Smacks and Lucky Charms. Even earlier they were in diapers using a bottle.

This whole "gateway" argument tries(and fails) to make consistantt causative links between substances for the sake of governmental and political control efforts.
 
Murrmurr said:
Plus there's myriad pot hybrids that some people just can't handle. Pot isn't just pot anymore, you gotta grow your own if you want pure, or at least know who your buying it from really well so you know if it's been treated.
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One of the advantages of living in Canada where it’s legal. No more meeting people in back alleys or bars. There‘re are rules and product strengths are defined. It does mean the product costs more. There’re still some who buy on the black market.
 
Don M. said:
I suspect that as MJ is made legal, in more States, it will become a "gateway" drug to more hazardous drugs....cocaine, heroin, etc.
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Exactly! It's going to get worse and worse now that it's legal.
debodun said:
I have a cousin that's a hospice chaplain. He averages 3 funerals a week from young people overdosing on drugs.
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Yes and that is sad. Look at the ever increasing homeless drug addicts all over the streets now in every state. It's crazy.
JaniceM said:
(I'll try to keep this brief, as I'm REALLY fed up with snide remarks and 'lols' when I express 'unpopular' viewpoints)

@DonM : Isn't that the way the 'gateway' theory was approached decades ago?
If so, I honestly don't have an opinion, as I have nothing to base it on.
Reason: individuals I knew when I was a young adult who were regularly using as you call it MJ AND no other drugs didn't last long enough TO 'transition,' they committed suicide- 2 by gunshot, 1 by hanging, all were in their mid-twenties. Much later, a local girl also rigged a gun up to a door and shot herself- she was 13 years old.

However- one approach that unfortunately is valid is young people getting the message- sometimes from their own parents- that marijuana is natural, safe, and acceptable.. so as they don't want to be like older generations they choose harder drugs instead.

As some use the term mind-altering substances- the human mind is not meant to be 'altered.' A few years ago, I had a psychology book that showed brain scans that prove the brains of addicts are different.
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Exactly! I agree. People underestimate MJ and think it's harmless. Every kind of drug will have a negative effect on the mind. Once people get used to their miund being altered, they crave more and from ore sources, meaning harder drugs.
NorthernLight said:
MJ is now legal in Canada. I don't partake.

Okay, maybe a drunk is meaner than a person who's high, and many respectable and successful people smoke every day.

But I have observed that marijuana CAN affect people's behavior and personality in negative ways.
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True, just because it doesn't make them mean doesn't mean it's harmless. It's all bad.
 
Aunt Mavis said:
Agreed 100 percent.
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I do not see how one would lead to the other ? I have enjoyed alcohol [socically] most of my adult life. I have never considered any other 'drug' ?

Alcohol makes some folks crazy [men & women] . From the people I have been around, pot seems to mellow them out.

Back in the day (as they say) I worked as a bouncer & as a bartender ... I've seen both, I don't see the connection.
 
I don't think the gateway idea was ever saying it was the first thing (alcohol or sugar smacks) anyone ever took, but that when a teen buys his first bag of weed he has crossed into an area he might have feared before. He has met a drug dealer, done something illegal and the police didn't drive up, his parents didn't find out, so now he's less afraid to try other illegal drugs.

I don't think whether or not it's a gateway drug matters as much as what might happen to a growing brain with regular marijuana use. Not only is it associated with an increase risk of schizophrenia, it can also cause a decrease in motivation, taking an active, good student with a future and turning him into a low-achiever who never leaves his parent's basement.
 
Della said:
I don't think the gateway idea was ever saying it was the first thing (alcohol or sugar smacks) anyone ever took, but that when a teen buys his first bag of weed he has crossed into an area he might have feared before. He has met a drug dealer, done something illegal and the police didn't drive up, his parents didn't find out, so now he's less afraid to try other illegal drugs.

I don't think whether or not it's a gateway drug matters as much as what might happen to a growing brain with regular marijuana use. Not only is it associated with an increase risk of schizophrenia, it can also cause a decrease in motivation, taking an active, good student with a future and turning him into a low-achiever who never leaves his parent's basement.
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It seems to me that teenagers experiment with many things that can be dangerous. Sex is a big one, smoking Tabaco, driving crazy, and even some sports have ruined the teenagers life by severe injury. Who here on this forum never broke a law OR disobeyed their parents to experiment in some way?
 
As a former resident in New York City, I wouldn't believe a word from a story in the New York Post. It's owned by that far right Rupert Murdoch. Who also owns Fox News. We New Yorkers who wanted a more fair and accurate news always preferred The New York Daily News or the New York Times. The New York Post is the paper who insulted all of the Jews of New York and the country buy publishing the infamous so-called, Hitler Diaries, which downplayed the holocaust and defended Hitler.
 
Della said:
He has met a drug dealer, done something illegal and the police didn't drive up, his parents didn't find out, so now he's less afraid to try other illegal drugs.
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That drug dealer is almost always his/her good friend. Drug dealers generally have great personalities, after all, they are salespeople trying to satisfy customers, a great skill in the 'real' world.
 
Pepper said:
That drug dealer is almost always his/her good friend. Drug dealers generally have great personalities, after all, they are salespeople trying to satisfy customers, a great skill in the 'real' world.
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Yes and finding out his friend is dealing is just another door opening into the world of drugs.
 
Paco Dennis said:
It seems to me that teenagers experiment with many things that can be dangerous. Sex is a big one, smoking Tabaco, driving crazy, and even some sports have ruined the teenagers life by severe injury. Who here on this forum never broke a law OR disobeyed their parents to experiment in some way?
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Even I did. 😛

Seriously tho, I just wasn't interested in drugs and alcohol when I was a kid. I didn't drink or smoke til I was well into my 20s. Come to think of it, I got into a little trouble, but I never broken any laws.

But I gotta mention, it's also a myth that kids "experiment" with drugs or alcohol. Kids don't experiment, they know exactly what to expect. Naturally, someone experiments at some point, but I'd bet you it's almost always an adult, primarily to keep interest in their product and increase sales, probably, but some experiment for the experience. And those experiences are canonized in oral history, art, film, poetry and songs; none of it's a mystery to kids. (Except the potential for addiction and ruin. That, they don't seem able to grasp.)
 
Murrmurr said:
Even I did. 😛

Seriously tho, I just wasn't interested in drugs and alcohol when I was a kid. I didn't drink or smoke til I was well into my 20s. Come to think of it, I got into a little trouble, but I never broken any laws.

But I gotta mention, it's also a myth that kids "experiment" with drugs or alcohol. Kids don't experiment, they know exactly what to expect. Naturally, someone experiments at some point, but I'd bet you it's almost always an adult, primarily to keep interest in their product and increase sales, probably, but some experiment for the experience. And those experiences are canonized in oral history, art, film, poetry and songs; none of it's a mystery to kids. (Except the potential for addiction and ruin. That, they don't seem able to grasp.)
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I disagree with this. They have some knowledge of ""whatever", but not experience of it. I never knew how experimenting would effect me. Sure I heard "don't do that", and of course that was a big incentive to try it. Adults do, why not me? Not the best logic, but it is often a teenagers thinking.
 
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