Criminalization Makes Marijuana a Gateway Drug

Let's assume you've smoked marijuana. Wild assumption, right? So surely, you've endeavored into bigger and badder things too? The truth is that marijuana, the plant, is not a gateway drug. Marijuana, in its medical uses, is not a gateway drug. But the criminal culture that surrounds the drug war, rather, is what creates this widely-feared gateway.

And the gatekeepers? You guessed it - everyone but marijuana users. Think about black-market dealers from top to bottom: the drug lords in other countries, the sinister characters digging narco-tunnels from Mexico to the United States, the high-level dealers, the low-level dealers. All these people with dirty street product, who don't have their marijuana lab-tested for toxins and contaminants. Those are the gatekeepers, and those are the ones that cause the perpetuation that marijuana itself is a gateway drug.

And then, of course, there's the anti-marijuana politicians. These are the guys that ignore any evidence that marijuana has and is helping patients of certain diseases. These are the guys that are perfectly happy with you ingesting a bevvy of pills with side effects ranging from stomach-bleeding to thoughts of suicide. These are the guys that would rather have you drive to a bar, throw back as many beers as you'd like, then drive home. These politicians would put you in prison for months alongside violent criminals just because of a minor marijuana possession charge. So, you end up in jail for a minor possession charge. It's your first time in prison, and you've got violent criminals around you. Assuming you make it out physically okay, you've probably got some phychological issues now to talk through - and you've certainly now got a record following you around forever.

Even Edward McClelland, an NBC Chicago affiliate writer says that the only thing marijuana is a gateway to is stoner music like Bob Marley, junk food, surfing the internet all day, and watching cartoons. McClelland makes a great case for a lot of issues surrounding marijuana and which gate it is we're all supposed to be walking through. He mentions Anita Alvarez, a state attorney in Chicago, who doesn't want to decriminalize marijuana because, of course, it's a gateway drug.

"Alvarez doesn't want to decriminalize marijuana because it would be bad for business," says McClelland. "Fewer pot busts means fewer court cases, which means fewer assistant state's attorneys, which means fewer jobs for Alvarez to hand out, and fewer employees to work for her re-election. So it's in her interest to call marijuana a gateway drug. Let's just be clear that the gate leads to a very comfortable couch."

McClelland is onto something. States can make their money the right way or the wrong way, but that's a moral decision we don't want them making, since so far, their moral decision has been to use any means necessary to write tickets and make arrests, despite, in some cases like New York's, being told otherwise. In fact, the Drug Policy Alliance had found that New York City police were targeting minorities specifically.

Most proponents of medical marijuana agree that some sort of organized regulation needs to happen, and all agree that not allowing medical marijuana to exist legally pushes normally-lawful citizens to the black market. Inevitably on that black market, patients will receive contaminated or not optimally-potent product. Lab associations like the Association Of California Cannabis Laboratories(ACCL) are stepping in to ensure clean and consistent products across the industry - and products that target specific illnesses and symptoms with cannibidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels. This sort of chemical-level science isn't operating in an industry that is meant for a marijuana user to springboard into other drugs; organizations like the ACCL are aimed at creating effective medicine for patients.

So while proponents try to get effective, clean relief into the hands of the sick, the pharmacetical industry aims to prescribe pills that makes your stomach bleed, pills that cause depression (fixed by a pill that relieves depression), pills that make you nauseated, pills that frankly, make you need more pills. Politicians are creating laws that turn a law-abiding citizen with a debilitating disease into prison-packing criminals. A black market drug dealer is trying to figure out new ways to make money by selling people weaker marijuana mixed with whatever toxins it picked up on its way into the country underground. If you decriminalize marijuana, you lessen (if not lose) the underground market.

One such gatekeeper offcially thanked former and present United States presidents for keeping his cartel alive through criminalization. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, the assumed head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, was quoted as saying: "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you."

If marijuana is a gateway drug, it's only because the gateways are paved with bad politics and suspicious characters. One can't help but wonder if we loosened the noose locally on marijuana a little, if the gateway we're so terrified of might just disappear.