Quote Originally Posted by graph
It is, but I think alcohol and tobacoo are bigger gateway drugs.

The only reason I say cannabis is a gateway drug is because when you outlaw a substance, you make outlaws out of the people who use that substace. Thus, normally upstanding citizens who indulge in a perfectly acceptable habit are put in contact with people who commit other crimes, or use harder substances.
Precisely. Once you start smoking weed, you need to get it from somewhere. And then you get connections in the drug trade since the people who sell harder drugs also tend to sell weed. And after enough time dealing with the black market and all the various buyers and sellers of drugs, you eventually come across the other drugs. It's simply an inevitability. I myself only want to stick to weed for the moment and maybe try shrooms sometime, but I know people who do acid and coke and ecstasy and all kinds of pills and shit who I would have never met if I hadn't started toking.

That is to say, smoking weed in and of itself won't lead you to do other drugs if you don't want to do them, but it will definitely give you the opportunity where you would have otherwise not had it, which is where all the "gateway drug" statistics come from that the anti-drug people use.