The whole notion of "gateway drugs" needs to be done away with. Drugs engage with receptors in our brains the same way as food does. So either drugs are food or food is a gateway drug
When it comes to using cannabis, your best bet is to do your own research first and consider the sources of the information you find.
I’d not rely on Kam or Josh.
Firstly the notion of a gateway is a theory, not a fact.
BUT if you accept the theory, then the idea that Marijuana is
the stepping stone to harder drugs is refuted, with
ACTUAL RESEARCH, here:
npr.org/2015/04/18/400658693/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-phrase-gateway-drugRATH: And tobacco - nicotine - appeared to be the most effective gateway of all. To reinforce her behavioral findings, Dr. Kandel wanted to conduct a biological study. And since you can't really confine kids to a lab and dose them with alcohol or tobacco - or heroin for that matter - science turns to rodents.
KANDEL: When you have an animal model, you can change the order of presentation. You can present an animal with, you know, drug A, see how he reacts to drug B and do the reverse - B versus A.
RATH: Now, Dr. Kandel is not a neurologist. But conveniently, she happens to be married to one and not just any - Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Eric Kandel. Nearly 40 years after Dr. Denise Kandel's paper on the gateway hypothesis was published, she and her husband published a molecular basis for nicotine as a gateway drug in the New England Journal of Medicine.
KANDEL: What we found is that when an animal was primed by nicotine and then was exposed to cocaine, the effect of cocaine was amplified many times.