Well said, JimmyT. You know, looking back to the people I grew up with it wasn't too hard to see which ones were likely to turn to hard drugs. Yeah, those particular individuals used pot all right, and they also smoked and drank and searched out any other high they could possibly find, and did it exessively. They would have done the same thing if pot never existed at all. Blaming it on pot is a bit facile, in my opinion. You could just as well blame it on alcohol, cigarettes, or blue denims.

The crucial thing is a person's attitude. It is their self-destructive or reckless attitude that will take them into hard drugs and keep them there till it kills them. 98% of the young people I knew in my early 20's used pot casually. Only about 5% of them went into hard drugs to much extent, but about 50% of them had real trouble with alcohol and about 95% of them smoked cigarettes every day of their lives...and damaged their health and family life in the process.

I watched it all and couldn't fathom how they could do that. It was their attitude, and what they took for granted, and what they thought of as "a good time". It was also peer pressure...wanting to "fit in". Whenever I felt peer pressure pushing me, I tended to deliberately go the other way, and it served me well in the long run.