This has always bothered me, because I can think of instance where bad behaviors can definetly lead to worst behaviors. The classic, if you smoke pot you’ll use harder drugs, is clearly not true in itself. Weed doesn’t cause you to want to do harder drugs, but since weed is illegal in a lot of places, it could expose you to hard drugs and you could become a user. I understand that this is not always the case, but I’d like to better understand why this is considered a fallacy when it could be true sometimes.
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A slippery slope argument is not the same thing as an argument which says that one choice or behaviour will lead to other behaviours. People do confuse them a bunch though.
The slippery slope fallacy is typified by having an antecedent and a consequent that do not have a causal link. So for example, the argument “If you smoke weed then things will snowball and you will be doing crack soon”. The arguer has not defined any link between the idea that smoking weed will make you smoke crack. They are just kind of implying that one thing leads to another without offering any evidence. This is a slippery slope argument and fallacious.
Now take the argument you made: “If you smoke weed in a place that it is illegal then you increase the risk of being exposed to harder drugs when acquiring the weed. Person’s who are exposed to harder drugs are more likely to use them. Therefore smoking weed if it is illegal can make you more likely to be a user of harder drugs.”. So now the arguer has defined a causal link between the two behaviours, so it does not have the typical problems of a slippery slope argument (There are still some issues though).
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