Fellow blogger Gerard, over at American Digest, announced on April 10 that he was going "on retreat" for "eight to ten days", alerting us that his voice would be silent, at least for us, for awhile.

That was 9 days ago, so hope is rising here that the retreat is almost over.

Gerard consistently offers interesting insights - certainly developed in greater detail and with greater thought than you are ever likely to find manifested here - while he's waking, showering and shaving, and he's good enought to share them with us.

Frankly, I've missed reading him for the better part of the last fortnight.

But we may have to have an exchange over this one, left behind as he departed:

Yes, Marijuana is a Gateway Drug

ONE OF THE FAVORITE arguments for the legalization of marijuana is that it is not a "Gateway Drug" as the opponents to legalization assert. Well, that depends on what the meaning of Gateway is. If you mean that marijuana leads one to crave other more harmful and serious drugs by its effect on the nervous system, you are most certainly wrong. Marijuana, while the use may become habitual in itself, does not compel one to seek out other drugs in the search for an ever increasing high any more than beer drinking automatically leads one to downing a pint of Tequila in straight shots of an evening only to rise in the morning in search of another shot. In each case the gateway leads not to abuse in the drugs themselves, but into a lifestyle where the abuse of drugs is the norm. While it is true that the vast majority can use marijuana for nothing other than an idle stimulant in idle moments, a not insubstantial minority cannot resist moving through the gateway to the use of other far less benign drugs.

Not because he's necessarily wrong, but because I don't know what he bases that on.

Or, for that matter, what it means.

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