I agree with mmnin - branding an activity as socially unacceptable tends to create a "black market" culture or "subterannean culture" that surrounds that activity. As a result, people who would not otherwise be exposed to or interested in the "underbelly" of that sub-culture would more likely experience it.
You can use this same argument for legalizing marijuana. If it were legal, it would be no more of a gateway drug than alcohol. But forcing people to pursue illegal venues to obtain the drug exposes them to a kind of culture they wouldn't normally be exposed to if they could buy marijuana at the 7/11. The attitude that marijuana is a gateway drug is essentially self-fulfilling when you make it illegal. You drive people to engage in illegal activity and as a result expose them to more illegal activity that they wouldn't normally encounter or want to engage in.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
