Marijuana—The Gateway Drug!
Assignment: You and your group are
members of a task force to evaluate whether it is ethical to decriminalize
(lower or reduce the penalties for) or legalize (completely eliminate
all legal barriers to possession of and/or establish legal parameters for
cultivation and/or sale of) marijuana in the state of Nevada. (Let us pretend for a moment that there is in
fact something better than a snowball’s chance in hell that marijuana could ever
become legal in Nevada.) One of the issues
you must consider is the question of whether marijuana is a “gateway”
drug. In discussing your group’s
approach to this question, structure your responses according to the following
questions on paper of your own providing.
It will require you to read over the personal anecdote of a troubled
life that began with marijuana use and the summary of a
1. 
When people say marijuana
could be a “gateway drug”, what does this mean?
What explicit or implicit theory about how the world works is the
basis for this contention?
2. 
Compare the summary of
evidence provided by the two sources (RAND and the anecdote) on the issue of
whether marijuana is a gateway drug. How
confident are these two sources on their various claims? What arguments would each make against the
other?
3. 
What differences exist
between the RAND and the personal anecdote on the policy implications of their
respective positions on the potential gateway effects of marijuana? Whose
position seems more powerful—in terms of the policy implication of whether to
legalize? (Bear in mind that the RAND report summary, while questioning the
gateway effects of marijuana, falls short of calling for legalization. Think of it in terms of which side of the
debate—marijuana is not a gateway and should be legal, or
marijuana is a gateway and should not be legal—could gain the
most comfort from the information provided here.)
4. 
Optional bonus: Are there
other issues surrounding this debate that are worth considering?
I dug up this old photo from
my undergraduate scrapbook. As you can
see, the accumulation of years of munchies took its toll on my otherwise dainty
figure. For me, marijuana was a
gateway—to the snack cupboard. The
leviathan depicted was the result of a combination of stashes from a number of
my associates. The final product we
called “The Reckoning.”
Don’t try this at home, kids. Even if marijuana is not a gateway to harder drugs, it is still the plaything of the weak-minded. Marijuana smoking can by psychologically addictive and has been definitively linked with (1) reduced long-term intellectual capacity; (2) reduced white blood cell counts; (3) increased risk of heart disease; (4) increased risk of various forms of cancer; (5) damage to reproductive capacity; (6) obesity, and sundry other medical maladies. It can also get you prison time in Nevada. Just say no.