The "gateway" myth debunked

[RainDog]

Last edited Mon May 5, 2014, 08:16 PM - Edit history (3)

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/marijuana-is-gateway-drug-theory-debunked-again

For decades, prohibitionists have claimed that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that inevitably leads to use of harder substances like heroin and cocaine — despite the fact that every objective study ever done on the gateway theory has determined that it’s absolute crap.

Last week, researchers at the University of New Hampshire released yet another study discrediting the gateway theory. Their findings, based on survey data from more than 1,200 students in Florida public schools, showed that a person’s likelihood to use harder drugs has more to do with social and environmental factors than whether or not they’ve ever tried marijuana.

edit to correct: The researchers found that the strongest predictor of other illicit drug use appears to be race-ethnicity, not prior use of marijuana. Non-Hispanic whites show the greatest odds of other illicit substance use, followed by Hispanics, and then by African Americans.

New Hampshire study: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-09/uonh-rom083110.php

Whether teenagers who smoked pot will use other illicit drugs as young adults has more to do with life factors such as employment status and stress, according to the new research. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether someone will use other illicit drugs is their race/ethnicity, not whether they ever used marijuana.

iow - it's lack of employment opportunities, NOT MARIJUANA that creates the lack of opportunity and the stress this implies.

Conducted by UNH associate professors of sociology Karen Van Gundy and Cesar Rebellon, the research appears in the September 2010, issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior in the article, "A Life-course Perspective on the 'Gateway Hypothesis.' "

"In light of these findings, we urge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the 'drug problem,' " Van Gundy and Rebellon say.

The researchers used survey data from 1,286 young adults who attended Miami-Dade public schools in the 1990s. Within the final sample, 26 percent of the respondents are African American, 44 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are non-Hispanic white.

Once young adults reach age 21, the gateway effect subsides entirely.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/marijuana-a-gateway-drug-scientists-call-theory-half-baked/

Scientists say "gateway theory is bunk

http://www.drugscience.org/sfu/sfu_gateway.html

...A study by the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, researchers found no gateway effect for marijuana. Surveying 17,000 drug users over a 10-year period, they reported that marijuana use typically began between the ages of 18 and 20, and cocaine use began between 20 and 25. Moreover, they found that there was not much variance among those who used cocaine in comparison to if they had previously used marijuana. There were substantial individuals who had used “soft and hard drugs”, but the association was related to personal characteristics and a tendency to partake in experimentation (Golub & Johnson, 2001).

This study demonstrated that arrest, lack of education, and employment put someone on a path to more involvement with illicit drugs - iow - the underground economy - with the proximity of other drugs as part of that economy - was the greatest predictive factor, while supportive social structure, education and opportunity were deterrents.

The Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report - "Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana—usually before they are of legal age.

In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a "gateway" drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, "gateway" to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs. An important caution is that data on drug use progression cannot be assumed to apply to the use of drugs for medical purposes. It does not follow from those data that if marijuana were available by prescription for medical use, the pattern of drug use would remain the same as seen in illicit use" (Joy et al. 1999)

A more recent study based on national survey data also does not support the hypothesis that increases in marijuana use lead to increased use of more dangerous drugs among the general public. In the American Journal of Public Health, Andrew Golub and Bruce Johnson of the National Development and Research Institute in New York wrote that young people who smoked marijuana in the generations before and after the baby boomers do not appear to be likely to move on to harder drugs. The researchers said that these findings suggest that the gateway phenomenon reflects norms prevailing among youths at a specific place and time.

Those who came of age in the 1990s did so when medical marijuana was made legal - a trend that continues. Previous studies in CA indicate that marijuana use leveled off when marijuana became "normalized" rather than stigmatized - and when it was available in markets that would exclude other illegal substances.

"Marijuana culture" in places like CA also stigmatize pharmaceutical drug use because such substances are not herbal/organic.

On the other hand, Golub and Johnson found:

Research also suggests that the “gateway theory” does not describe the behavior of serious drug users:

“The serious drug users were substantially different from high school samples in their progression of drug use. The serious drug users were less likely to follow the typical sequence identified in previous studies (alcohol, then marijuana, followed by other illicit drugs). They were more likely to have used marijuana before using alcohol, and more likely to have used other illicit drugs before using marijuana. We also found that atypical sequencing was associated with earlier initiation of the use of illicit drugs other than marijuana and greater lifetime drug involvement. These findings suggest that for a large number of serious drug users, marijuana does not play the role of a 'gateway drug'. We conclude that prevention efforts which focus on alcohol and marijuana may be of limited effectiveness for youth who are at risk for serious drug abuse” (Mackesy-Amiti et al. 1997)