(Sadly speaking from experience)
Confounding migraines for weed prescriptions and very real stroke risk and a desire for low THC marijuana isn't going to be a happy show I want to go through watching that happen to friends.
It makes a mockery of real medical issues.
Doctors and health care should be involved in drug use and advising patients, maybe even clean supplies or other things.
But we got the ACA of public health options with medical marijuana. And I want to remember Obama and others for inspiring us, not hacks.
A lot of people won't be believed in time.
Were I to pick a gateway drug into cocaine, it would be alcohol. It becomes a way to infuse more energy in a later night, which is usually one of alcoholic revelry.
When cannabis is just in a store and it's the only thing there, many potheads just stay in the pothead bubble.
There were Conservative politicians who got up and publicly said that toddlers would die cause they'd eat marijuana plants grown by their parents!
I wouldn't blame the business plans so much. A lot of them applied for licenses but didn't get theirs approved till after the huge players did. By then, the market had already consolidated.
Myself I have been involved with weed a long time and never seen cocaine though my son did go into town one night and lock himself out of his car and have an experience we call "the night of the living baseheads."
The best drug dealer at my old school was a guy who would take chances nobody else would; I knew him somebody who dealt weed, psychedelic mushrooms and acid to my friends although I was persona-non-gratis with him because he was seriously criminally minded and led a gay bashing gang that mostly bashed straight people who were perceived as allies [1], although it took just one snarky comment (my case) or advising somebody being shot at with a paint pellet gun to see the police (the popular president of the paint pellet gun club.)
He eventually got caught bashing in an RA in the face with a rock shot with one of those rubber band catapults people use to shoot water balloons at the beach. He was banned from campus but I saw him once when he was dropping off a delivery for a friend. My friend later told me that he'd been caught on videotape dealing 3kg of cocaine to an undercover cop and he did time.
That's an unusual case. Except for that guy and the Vietnamese kid who took money and never delivered the weed to my wife when she was in high school, all the pot dealers I knew were basically responsible and law-abiding people who only dealt pot and other soft drugs. Funny somebody dropped a dime on the later.
[1] this was the 1980s during peak AIDS panic and I guess they were afraid if they spilled gay blood they might get AIDS or something
Everyone I knew who developed coke problems had drinking problems first. Bar none.
Cannabis is a multi purpose drug, cocaine is party drug and/or a "I haven't slept, don't want the 8 hour+ commitment of speed, but need to stay awake" drug.
The overlap of pot users and cocaine users is rather small in my anecdotal experience.
In the movies the drug dealer has an overcoat with every common drug ready to sell at any point. In reality people stick to one or products because there not dealing with multiple suppliers and carrying products for months until the right buyer comes along, they buy in bulk and sell quickly.
I didn't want my kids to have any reason to know the types of people we had to deal with.
A stoner would smoke half-a-joint and then easily eat a pound of processed meat, then send a whole bag of chips down the hatch, washing it down with two or three pints of beer, and twenty minutes later will be eating ice cream directly from the bucket.
Food is the worst and most dangerous drug of modern human history. It has killed more animals, insects, and humans than any other drug. Cocaine compared to it is a kindergarten party.
I'd like to say that's a little bit of an exaggeration but I also feel like a joint and $25 for taco bell at 1am wouldn't help my case...