Frankly I don't really like pot. I've tried it. Some of my friends smoke it frequently. Eh. Just not my thing.

I do think pot has tangible side-effects, particularly on your outlook on life. My ex was a heavy pot smoker and was rather lazy and unproductive. I drew a correlation at the time, but objectively I can't say which is the chicken and which is the egg. If - and this is not a 'fact' to begin with - pot does cause people to become this way, is it even the Government's role to play Daddy and tell them they can't live their lives as lazy and unproductive? Outside of a situation where they're sucking off welfare at the same time, of course.

Regarding "Gateway", I don't really think so. I have friends that are in their 30s that have never tried anything but pot. I have friends in their 20s that did harder drugs (acid), stopped, and now only do pot occasionally - still abstaining from the harder stuff. I don't think there's anything inherent in marijuana as a drug that makes you try other drugs. I certainly haven't had the urge to try heroin from the handful of times I've smoked on a Saturday night with friends. I think that any possible gateway danger is created by the circumstances surrounding obtaining pot. If you're getting pot from a dealer (and I never have, so this is all imagined), that dealer might try to sell you other stuff. Were pot legal and you could purchase it at 7/11, for example, those gateway dangers would actually be lessened. Theoretically.

Eh. Ultimately, I don't really care. It doesn't really affect me, and there's no grand social injustice that truly raises my ire. I do think it would be a nice new source of tax revenue. The money could be folded right back into rehab programs for harder drugs, creating positive effects on the overall "war on drugs" in tandem with my theoretical gateway solution above.