Since I was one of those drug addicts that kept on looking for that better high and did not stop looking until I was a full fledged heroin addict, I can say I never found a high better than marijuana.
Gateway drug? I think it may be the 1st or 2nd thing people mess with but the ones that go onto hard drugs would have gone on to hard drugs with or without marijuana in their lives anyways. They most likely started with alcohol because their parents had it in the house. Alcohol is the drug that causes people to lose their morals and blatently fuck up and then blame it on the alcohol saying "It was not me, it was the alcohol" But it is them that consume that hard core mind altering substance knowing full well it was going to do something to them that could seriously change peoples lives in the 1st place.
Alcohol is the gateway drug and it is advertized on TV because it is legal.