noun

• A drug which supposedly leads the user on to more addictive or dangerous drugs.

  ‘he said he still believed that cannabis was a ‘gateway drug’ to harder substances’

  More example sentences

  • ‘It's still a gateway drug for meth or cocaine; I wouldn't want my kids out there recreationally smoking marijuana.’
  • ‘The Mexican authorities were shocked at the liberalisation of the drug in Britain, he said, as marijuana was a gateway drug to cocaine.’
  • ‘Instead, the legal status of marijuana makes it a gateway drug.’
  • ‘There was also no evidence in either city to back the common refrain that marijuana serves as a gateway drug.’
  • ‘As to the gateway drug claims, heroin addicts have the type of personality that makes them heroin addicts.’
  • ‘Cigarettes are a gateway drug; most narcotics addicts start on cigarettes.’
  • ‘He added: ‘I don't believe that cannabis is a gateway drug that will inevitably lead users on to experimentation with other harder drugs’.’
  • ‘Many young people in the town are regarded as casual users of these recreational drugs, which are often seen as the gateway drug to substances such as cocaine and heroin.’
  • ‘Does this mean that alcohol is a gateway drug for marijuana?’
  • ‘At least the movie does a formidable service by proving once and for all that neither marijuana nor LSD is the true gateway drug.’
  • ‘The life list is the beginning of the mania, but much like a gateway drug, it can lead to more extreme enumerating activity.’
  • ‘While it might not be a gateway drug, I like to think of it as a ‘buffer drug’.’
  • ‘He scorns claims that cannabis is a gateway drug: ‘It's the individual's personality that leads to other drugs.’’
  • ‘There's clear evidence that cannabis is itself a gateway drug to harder and more damaging drugs, and that cannabis itself has a devastating impact on our poorer communities.’
  • ‘Demonised as a gateway drug, hailed as a medical wonder drug, cannabis is never far from controversy and the debate to legalise it has never been more acute.’
  • ‘It's de rigueur in high school health classes (or at least it was when I was in high school) for marijuana to be presented as the gateway drug.’
  • ‘Furthermore, those who used all three of these gateway drugs were much more likely to use cocaine than those who used only one gateway drug.’
  • ‘‘I consider our single malt a gateway drug for the whiskey industry,’ he says.’
  • ‘Twenty-nine point one percent of ecstasy users also abuse one or more other illegal substances, indicating it is likely to be a gateway drug.’
  • ‘We thought that comics were like a gateway drug into reading.’