Statistically for 104 Americans that have tried cannabis only 1 is a regular cocaine user and less that 1 is a heroin user. Surely that does not constitute cannabis as a gateway drug.

Here are the problems that may arise when cannabis is illegal:

• People who use cannabis regardless of the prohibition can come in contact with other illegal hard drugs and substances that are actually harmful to the human body (i.e. through drug dealers).
• And because cannabis is a soft drug, people who use it and see that it is not as damaging as the government says, may think that other drugs are as soft.  Especially in the United States where cannabis is a schedule 1 drug along with Cocaine and Heroin, the two most damaging illegal drugs known to man.

A real world example of this is the drug policy in the Netherlands.  Since choosing to tolerate the use of cannabis, Holland has lower drug use figures than the United States, which has a very strong handed and oppressive approach to drug policy.

This has happened for two reasons:

• Cannabis is freely available to the people in coffee shops where there are no hard drugs available
• The government separates cannabis into a soft category acknowledging the low risk it poses.  Other drugs are put into a hard category because of the high risk they pose.

Even then, hard drug use is treated as a public health problem and not a criminal one, addicts are given clean needles to stop the spread of HIV, AIDS and Hepatitis and offered treatment.  This has led to fewer deaths, fewer addicts and more demand for treatment.

Another theory for the gateway effect is as a persons tolerance for marijuana grows, the drug will begin to have less of an effect, causing them to want to try something harder.  However, as any decent cannabis user knows, if one starts using a different strain of cannabis, the effects will be similar to the first time the user tried it.  The tolerance only builds up per strain.

Want proof that cannabis is not a gateway drug just because many heroin and cocaine users have also used cannabis?  How bout we make breast milk and infant milk formula illegal because approximately 100% of cocaine and heroin users were bottle or breast fed and is obviously a gateway to harder drugs. (/sarcasm)

Cannabis criminalization leads to the problem of a GATEWAY LAW rather than a GATEWAY DRUG