he most significant gateway drug, but it is also a drug that has been losing influence:
Marijuana has been widely feared as the "gateway drug" that leads teenagers from smoking joints to experimenting with stronger stuff, such as cocaine and heroin. In 1978, according to government surveys, a staggering 10 percent of all high school seniors smoked marijuana every day. Today the percentage has dropped by half. That is still way too high, but attitudes have changed markedly. Only one quarter of high school seniors reported that marijuana was a dangerous drug in 1978, but now fully 75 percent do (Thomas 60).
At the same time, while the government continues to operate as if marijuana were a gateway drug, many researchers disagree and find that some claims undercut the drug war:
Like the once common insistence that steroids do not help athletes bulk up, the oft repeated lie that marijuana is some kind of deadly poison leads people--especially young people--to suspect all suggestions that drugs may be dangerous. It's hardly surprising that drug use has turned up among the most propagandized generation in history, or that almost all the upswing is accounted for by casual pot smoking. You don't have to smoke marijuana yourself, or even have a very wide circle of friends, to find plenty of anecdotal evidence that the drug is n
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