If your looking for a gateway drug, take a look at alcohol. It is proven to be more addictive than marajuana, do more damage than marajuana to your brain (most effects of marajuana to the synapses will disappear once use stops. Marajuana, or more accurately THC, does not kill brain cells, unlike alcohol). I would challenge you to name a drug user that doesn't also drink, and/or didn't drink before starting use of harder drugs.
Marajuana is far less dangerous than alcohol, being that you would have to consume nearly your body weight in order to overdose.
Marajuana is illegal and alcohol is legal for basically one reason: Those that made the laws back then drank, and marajuana was considered a "slum" drug, much like opium.
BTW, I do not smoke marajuana and have not smoked weed in 3 years and never regularly.
__________________
|