Yeah , and I disagree that there is a noticeable gateway effect with marijuana . Marijuana has been targeted by politicians because of this perceived gateway to other , harder drugs . Enough reasonable users are perfectly willing to not move on to harder drugs that it makes this gateway effect negligible . Of course if you ask most heroin users what their first drug was , they ' ll say weed , but if you ask most nonheroin users the same question , they ' ll say weed . My point is not whether or not there are isolated cases of a gateway effect . It was that it is so negligible , it should not be used as justification for unnecessary antipot laws . It would be like taking a poll of murders and asking if they ' ve ever played FPS games . Many will say yes . Does this mean FPS games are a gateway to real life violence ? No . If you ask most nonmurders , they will also respond that they ' ve played FPS games . Why ? Because they ' re popular games . Correlation does not imply causation .