Is it?

I can't figure out if there's a set defintion of it, as ti seems to just be political mumbo jumbo that no one knows what it means. Sort of like "they hate us for our freedoms."

All the online dictionaries use the very vague word "lead" describing the relationship between the substance and the further behavior. Is lead a casual term? I don't really know. Why couldn't they either say "suspected of causing" or "associated with" and then we would know wtf they're talking about?

Nice citations btw.

I think that marijuana smoking is a gateway drug, if we're talking about causality, in some sense. I do think that using an illegal drug would make someone less skeptical of others. Especially when they realize they've been fed lies about the drug in school and figure the rest of the drugs are as safe.

But in this sense I'm clearly talking about the activity and the social ramifications, not the pharmacological effects, of the substance, and I would suspect that the later (social) is mroe controlling(activity) than the former.

But of course the same motivations, amusement, curiosity, and satisfaction, drive someone to use marijuana as well as cocaine or whatever. So it's hard to sepperate the two.