Imagine walking through the streets of your city and smelling marijuana daily; the pungent smell making your throat burn and stomach hurt. Since the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, many states are now considering bills in their legislature to do the same. Smoking marijuana is generally seen as a dirty habit of unsophisticated people. Marijuana is a “gate way” drug, which means that once the high or thrill of using it wears off, users tend to move on to more addictive and destructive drugs to feel a more intense high. It can also be addictive, especially for people with depression since it gives them the feeling of “nothingness.” The effects of marijuana distracts the users from the other aspects of their lives that are upsetting them …show more content…
As defined by Merriam Webster, a gateway drug is, “a drug (such as alcohol or marijuana) whose use is thought to lead to the use of and dependence on a harder drug (such as cocaine or heroin).” Colorado, the first state in the United States to legalize marijuana, had crime rates decrease after it was legalized due to less marijuana possession and distributing charges. Since marijuana is a gateway drug, it will result in more serious arrests in the future than they would have had if it was not legalized. Someone who uses marijuana recreationally uses it to experience the high that they want to get from it. When the user builds up a tolerance or gets bored with the drug they tend to move on to more intense drugs such as cocaine or heroin. Drug Free World has an important point about marijuana saying, “Marijuana itself does not lead the person to other drugs.” The problems they were using marijuana to escape from lead them to try more intense drugs when they grow tolerant to the potentency of marijuana. In Colorado, the drug use in teens and adolescents has increased so much that the state is now the number one place in the nation for marijuana use in that age group. This age group is the most vulnerable to the effects of marijuana, and those between twelve to seventeen years old are “Eighty five times more likely to use cocaine than kids who do not use weed, and that sixty percent of the kids who smoke weed before the age of 15 move on to cocaine” (“Ten Facts”). This increasing number of adolescents and young adults in their twenties will lead to more drug related crimes in addiction in the future as more and more become