Originally posted by: Perry404
That's ridiculous, nobody has such a simplistic view of drugs. Are you honestly arguing that people perceive a difference between alcohol and weed but not between weed and heroin?
Absolutely! Maybe you are out of touch with a large portion of America.
Ask people if they think it is a sin to drink. Then ask them if it is a sin to use pot. What type of answers do you think you'll get?
Although alcohol (when abused)is more dangerous than pot you will find that a great deal of people think it's safer or "better" than pot. This is because it is legal so there is a different psychology surrounding alcohol.
Now let me tell you why they perceive pot and heroin to be the same.
All illegal drugs, through the "drug war" and anti-drug propeganda, are lumped together in the education system.
So when does this information matter? It matter to 7th-12th graders because this is where people start using drugs.
Of course it doesn't matter to a 25 year old who is a little better informed so the gateway idea is very real but only for youth. You and I know better. When you are 14 you don't. If a 14 year old uses pot it is a fact that he will be much more likely to experiment with other drugs simply because he perceives it to be ok now that he thinks pot is ok.
Heck i did. All my friends did.
Alcohol might be a special case, you're right. Perhaps a better analogy would be to the concept of "gateway crime"...say, speeding with quickly lead to mass murder. After all, once you break the law and do something dangerous, suddenly all law breaking and dangerous activities become safer and your fear of them is diminished...right?
I would agree with that.
In any case, pot is pretty safe compared to lots of other things people do. You are way more likely to die from smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, taking prescription medication, or eating too much red meat than you are from smoking pot. Nothing is perfectly safe, but pot is about as close as any vice out there.
You are only more likely to die from smoking cigarettes because more people smoke cigarettes than pot. Remember the number 420?
I can pretty much guarantee you that if you have ten people that smoke pot every day for forty years half of them will die from cancer and emphysema.
There is nothing "safe" about pot and many of them are the same chemical's that are found in cigarettes.