The fact that, in Go, you can have pointers to pointers, and reassign pointer variables like any other, would imply, IMO, that pointers are first-class values,

The fact that, in Go, you can have pointers to pointers, and reassign pointer variables like any other, would imply, IMO, that pointers are first-class values, and so they are true pointers, even without being able to pointer arithmetic with them.