[Persevero]

“Show me the studies that validate the gateway theory.”

Ok but why? They are very easy to find. It took me one minute.

“A major focus for concern has been the extent to which marijuana use leads to the use of and dependence on “hard” drugs. There has been a longstanding debate over whether this association is due to the criminalization of marijuana use, forcing the user to seek suppliers who deal in other illicit drugs, or whether marijuana conditions the user to try other drugs.

(To facilitate the ease of reading, understanding, and flow, this following statement was also copied to here, but because it is also referring to the study below, I left it there, as well.) Since marijuana is legal and widely available in the Netherlands, the findings from both studies, clearly indicate that marijuana serves as a gateway for use and abuse of other addictive drugs in adolescents whose central nervous system is still not fully developed.

A study was reported from Australia of a volunteer sample of 311 young, adult, monozygotic and dizygotic, same sex twins discordant for early cannabis use i.e. less than 17 years [ 1 ]. The outcome measures included subsequent non-medical use of prescription sedatives, hallucinogens, cocaine or other stimulants, and opiates leading to abuse or dependence on these drugs. Abuse and/or dependence on cannabis or alcohol were also outcome measures. Twins who used cannabis by age 17 had odds of other drug use or alcohol dependence plus drug abuse from two to five times higher than those of their discordant twin. These associations did not differ between monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The findings indicate that early use of cannabis is associated with increased risks of progression to other illicit drug use. Since the subjects were twins neither genetic nor environmental factors were likely to have produced the results. However, since marijuana use is illegal in Australia the study was unable to establish whether having to obtain the drug from dealers involved with other illegal drugs exposes the marijuana user to other illicit drugs.

A similar study was conducted in the Netherlands, where out of a group of 6000 twins, 219 same sex pairs were chosen, one of whom had begun using marijuana before age 18 while the other twin had not [ 3 ].

1 ] Lynsky MT, Heath AC, Bucholz KK, et al. Escalation of drug use in early-onset cannabis users vs. co-twin controls. JAMA 2003; 289: 427-433

3 ] Lynsky MT, Vink JM, Boomsa DI Early onset cannabis use and progression to. other drug use in a sample of Dutch twins. Behav Genet 2006; 36: 195-200

[Ken H]

The US has a much higher rate of heroin addiction than the Netherlands. The Netherlands had 25,000¹ heroin addicts in 2000. With a population of 16M, it works out to a rate of ~0.16%. The US had 980,000 heroin addicts² in 2000. With a population of 280M, that's an addiction rate of ~0.35%, or more than TWICE that of the Netherlands!

______________________________________

¹"In the Netherlands the total number of heroin addicts amounts to approximately 25,000."

http://opioids.com/heroin/holland.html

²"For example, numbers like heroin addiction. You can find numbers that go from 255,000 up to the one I'm currently using, 980,000, if I remember the last time we updated it, and those are all valid scientific studies."

--Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, Oct 4, 2000

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/symposium/panelmccaffrey.html

[Nate505]

None of these point out that pot is a gateway drug. They all point out that people who have used harder drugs have used pot before. Like I said, that is rather natural. Pot is a much more mild drug than a drug like heroin or cocaine, and it is natural that people would try something more mild than strong at the beginning. Heck, not with just drugs but just about anything. Most people don't cannonball into a hot tub. They ease their way into it to adjust to the temperature. Most people don't turn the volume up on their stereo all the way. They adjust to the volume and then increase it as needed.

Considering that there are 15 or so million past month pot smokers and 2-3 or so million past cocaine users (which is the next most used illicit drug after pot) the simple math blows the gateway theory out of the water. If the gateway theory meant anything, there should be way more than that.