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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

The key question I have about decriminalisation of marijuana and things like mushrooms and hopefully MDMA soon, is "will it reduce the number of people who try meth/ice?"

My theory is that people become addicted to meth/ice because they want to get high, but "good" drugs like marijuana and MDMA/mushrooms are not legal/available/cheap, so people buy/try meth/ice.

Put another way, my theory is that legalisation of "good" drugs like marijuana will lead to fewer people trying/becoming addicted to meth/ice. I wonder if its working out that way in places where marijuana is legalised.

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I suspect it's not as linear as that.

I never tried pot in my youth because it was "bad" - an illegal drug, like heroin or meth.

Conversely some people may try pot or mushrooms and assume that ALL drugs are not as dangerous as they've been lead to believe.

Exactly, education is important... not misguidance, or generalization, but true education. Respect should be given to these things. If they weren't taboo, we would all be better off.

I doubt there will ever be a clear answer on this. More likely, there will be a variety of factors.

That said, the "gateway drug" effect is real. It's been shown in many studies (although I'm not sure how many looked at shrooms as the gateway- usually it's weed). Likewise, we've probably all seen people drink ever-stronger drinks to get drunk/buzzed once their body because resistant to alcohol. Other drugs are no different, although I wager there are different types of people seeking different types of buzzes so I'm sure the distribution is not uniform.

The gateway drug effect is only real in a black market where an actor will likely be pushing many different drugs. If they are all available legally, and the populace is educated about them, the outcome is likely to be better than the contrary, where it's illegal, and taboo.

Exactly, places like Amsterdam where you can buy both marijuana and shrooms legally are not destroyed pits of hell either.

In fact I enjoy Amsterdam a lot and it does many things much better than comparable cities in Germany. Especially catastrophically bad places like Berlin.

There are many cultural differences at play though. The only difference between Denver and Amsterdam is not height. The point I was trying to make in my post was there are many factors at play, but I believe gateway drug effect will be one of them.

>people become addicted to meth/ice because they want to get high

s/want to get high/are unhappy

and... not because they want to get high, but, because meth is addictive, by it's very nature. cannabis and psilocybin are not addictive. to further your point...

> cannabis and psilocybin are not addictive.

Not physically addictive. It's important to realise the difference because you can become mentally/psychological dependent on almost anything, including drugs.

As some anecdotal evidence I have a friend who was addicted to cannabis. It stemmed from his cigarette addiction, which he essentially replaced when he started smoking weed. He smoked weed every day for 4-5 years. Obviously that is not healthy. He's off it now, around a year. Needless to say, getting over a psychological addiction is much easier than a physical one.

marijuana is psychologically addictive

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