Why Smoking Marijuana Doesn't Make You a Junkie

[Pebbz]

Nothing else to do on a quiet day at work than find interesting stuff to read

So here's another one

 

 

USA -- Two recent studies should be the final nails in the coffin of the lie that has propelled some of this nation's most misguided policies: the claim that smoking marijuana somehow causes people to use hard drugs, often called the "gateway theory."

Such claims have been a staple of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under present drug czar John Walters. Typical is a 2004 New Mexico speech in which, according to the Albuquerque Journal, "Walters emphasized that marijuana is a 'gateway drug' that can lead to other chemical dependencies."

 

The gateway theory presents drug use as a tidy progression in which users move from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco to marijuana, and from there to hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Thus, zealots like Walters warn, marijuana is bad because it leads to things that are even worse.

 

It's a neat theory, easy to sell. The problem is, scientists keep poking holes in it -- the two new studies being are just the most recent examples.

 

In one National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh tracked the drug use patterns of 224 boys, starting at age 10 to 12 and ending at age 22. Right from the beginning these kids confounded expectations. Some followed the traditional gateway paradigm, starting with tobacco or alcohol and moving on to marijuana, but some reversed the pattern, starting with marijuana first. And some never progressed from one substance to another at all.

 

When they looked at the detailed data on these kids, the researchers found that the gateway theory simply didn't hold; environmental factors such as neighborhood characteristics played a much larger role than which drug the boys happened to use first. "Abusable drugs," they wrote, "occupy neither a specific place in a hierarchy nor a discrete position in a temporal sequence."

 

Lead researcher Dr. Ralph E. Tarter told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "It runs counter to about six decades of current drug policy in the country, where we believe that if we can't stop kids from using marijuana, then they're going to go on and become addicts to hard drugs."

 

Researchers in Brisbane, Australia, and St. Louis reached much the same conclusion in a larger and more complex study published last month. The research involved more than 4,000 Australian twins whose use of marijuana and other drugs was followed in detail from adolescence into adulthood.

 

Then -- and here's the fascinating part -- they matched the real-world data from the twins to mathematical models based on 13 different explanations of how use of marijuana and other illicit drugs might be related. These models ranged from pure chance -- assuming that any overlap between use of marijuana and other drugs is random -- to models in which underlying genetic or environmental factors lead to both marijuana and other drug use or models in which marijuana use causes use of other drugs or vice versa.

 

When they crunched the numbers, only one conclusion made sense: "Cannabis and other illicit drug use and misuse co-occur in the population due to common risk factors (correlated vulnerabilities) or a liability that is in part shared." Translated to plain English: the data don't show that marijuana causes use of other drugs, but instead indicate that the same factors that make people likely to try marijuana also make them likely to try other substances.

 

In the final blow to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs." In other words, the gateway isn't marijuana; it's laws that put marijuana into the same criminal underground with speed and heroin.

 

The lie that marijuana somehow turns people into junkies is dead. Officials who insist on repeating it as a way of squelching discussion about common-sense reforms should be laughed off the stage.

 

Bruce Mirken is communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project.

 

Source: AlterNet (US)

Author: Bruce Mirken, Marijuana Policy Project

Published: December 19, 2006

Copyright: 2006 Independent Media Institute

Contact: letters@alternet.org

Website: http://www.alternet.org/

DL: http://www.alternet.org/story/45535/

 

Marijuana Policy Project

http://www.mpp.org/

 

CannabisNews -- Cannabis Archives

http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml

[Zaknefain]

Well in a sense it is, people dont just wake up in the morning and decide to do crack. Through smoking marijuana people are introduced to the drug scene, and then decide to ma w.e im done talking fuck it.

[Pebbz]

Translated to plain English: the data don't show that marijuana causes use of other drugs, but instead indicate that the same factors that make people likely to try marijuana also make them likely to try other substances.

 

and also...

 

In the final blow to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs."

 

so yeh... don't get me wrong I agree... but it's not as if it wasn't a point already raised...

 

Pebbles

[pipeman]

In the final blow to claims that marijuana must remain illegal to keep us from becoming a nation of hard-drug addicts, the researchers added that any gateway effect that does exist is "more likely to be social than pharmacological," occurring because marijuana "introduces users to a provider (peer or black marketeer) who eventually becomes the source for other illicit drugs."

 

yes I agree with this and the argument actually supports the decriminalisation of marijuana, because if you take mj out of the illegal drugs scene maybe less people would be introduced to more dangerous and addictive drugs

[Pebbz]

Egg Sac Harry

 

 

[Dave The Nefarious]

The way i see it ...

- There is no chemical link between marijuana and other drugs - smoking marijuana doesn't make you feel like you should then go and do other drugs. If anything it'll just make you feel like smoking marijuana again.

- All drugs are potentially gateway drugs, and likewise all drugs are potentially NOT gateway drugs - it depends on the individual in question (thus not the drug itself, so if that's true then there is no such thing as a gateway DRUG, just a susceptible individual)

- Many hard drug users also smoke pot - not because of any link between pot and their other drugs, but simply because they also enjoy pot, so this may have helped make some people think there's a link between pot and drugs.

- What about energy drinks like Red Bull which are clearly marketed to give you a buzz - are these not gateway drugs then?

[123abc]

MJ is a tool or drug or substance that has uses and abuses...

 

Now be making MJ illegal you cause it to have a market value that is beyong the reach of a legal product..

That causes factors like having to find some1 to (at young ages) has the same substance issue/abuse as you (thus causing you to hang around people you normally wouldnt) and to hang in the 'corner with' outside and segregated from societys 'tax paying citezens".. Same mentality with finding some1 to go halves with u on a bottle of alkohol when you are underage you associate with people you normally wouldnt associate with.. and while under the influenece of brain altering substances you get influenced and have a false sence of securtiy while isolated from the real world..

 

Illegal MJ causes people to associate with people who are junkies and exposed to a junky and 3rd party scene of those who have addictive personalities.. Smoking MJ doesnt make you a junky.. its finding people to share the cost/burden of the illegal substance.. and the smell that brings aroud your nose..

 

If weed was legal you could smoke it and do you own thing.. not have to hang with others for discount prices.. and maybe some of these kids who are not "doped" would be able to talk smart with out being labbled nerds while clearly thinking smart.. They have to retain the image to retain the habit and $$ benefits of a social society of weed

[Pebbz]

Many hard drug users also smoke pot - not because of any link between pot and their other drugs, but simply because they also enjoy pot, so this may have helped make some people think there's a link between pot and drugs.

 

As far as it makes sense to me.. a Gateway drug was called as such because... essentially it was a gateway to accessing other drugs.

 

You go to your dealer.. get your pot, dealer tries to make money by attempting to sell you some other drugs while your at it, if your own choices made you accept this offer it becomes your primary access to these drugs and dealer makes more dough of ya

 

It's alot harder to get illicit drugs like coke and speed etc from a random on the street, who you might not even approached had you not been offerred in the first place

 

Pebbles

[sunnycoaststoner]

dont know about you lot, but if the person who i get some smoko off when times are tough, ever started getting into harder stuff, i wouldn't go there anymore. so my gate way is shut.... by my choice. it's all up to the user, you use the drugs they don't use you.

 

and just thinking about it is'nt it usually a friend or friend of a friend who is into the scene, who say's aww cum on it wont hurt you, just try it once, it'll make you feel great!!!!!!!!! not the dealer!!!!!!!!

[DownUnderDoper]

people who deal drugs 'professionally' are going to deal whatever they can get their hands on.. 3 months to replace a busted cannabis grow.. 3 days for E or meth.. does that make the law the 'gateway'

 

If there is a gateway drug tho.. it's undoubtably alcohol as the vast majority of people use alcohol as their first psycoactive drug experience.. everything after that is on the other side of the gate.