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Exploding the Myths: The Gateway Theory

By

Neal Smith

Marijuana as a Gateway substance to other illegal Drugs? That s one of the fallacies the U.S.government has been putting out as Evidence of Marijuana s dangers. But there s no scientificevidence to support this idea. There have been many claims, but no study has shown any of them to bebased in fact.

The National Academy of Sciences Institute on Medicine performed an exhaustive study in 1999 thatwas the first debunking of the notion that if you smoke Marijuana you will want to use Heroin. There isno evidence that Marijuana leads to other illicit substances. The IOM report explains it this way:

The stepping stone hypothesis applies to marijuana only in the broadest sense. People who enjoy the effects of marijuana are, logically, more likely to be willing to try other mood-altering drugs than are people who are not willingto try marijuana or who dislike its effects. In other words, many of the factors associated with a willingness to usemarijuana are, presumably, the same as those associated with a willingness to use other illicit drugs. Those factorsinclude physiological reactions to the drug effect, which are consistent with the stepping stone hypothesis, but alsopsychosocial factors, which are independent of drug-specific effects. There is no evidence that marijuana serves as astepping stone on the basis of its particular physiological effect. One might argue that marijuana is generally usedbefore other illicit mood-altering drugs, in part, because its effects are milder; in that case, marijuana is a stepping stoneonly in the same sense as taking a small dose of a particular drug and then increasing that dose over time is a steppingstone to increased drug use.Whereas the stepping stone hypothesis presumes a predominantly physiological componentof drug progression, the gateway theory is a social theory. The latter does not suggest that the pharmacological qualitiesof marijuana make it a risk factor for progression to other drug use. Instead, the legal status of marijuana makes it a

gateway drug .

Source check this at: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6376&page=99 What this issaying, in essence, is the illegality of Marijuana is more responsible for progression to drugs of abusethan the Marijuana itself.

In 2002, the Rand Corporation released a report questioning the Gateway Theory:

This evidence would appear to make a strong case for a gateway effect. However, another explanation has been suggested: Those who use drugs may have an underlying propensity to doso that is not specific to any one drug. There is some support for such a "common-factor" modelin studies of genetic, familial, and environmental factors influencing drug use. The presence of acommon propensity could explain why people who use one drug are so much more likely to useanother than are people who do not use the first drug. It has also been suggested that marijuanause precedes hard-drug use simply because opportunities to use marijuana come earlier in lifethan opportunities to use hard drugs. The DPRC analysis offers the first quantitative evidence thatthese observations can, without resort to a gateway effect, explain the strong observedassociations between marijuana and hard-drug initiation.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB6010/index1.html .

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In 2006, an article in American Journal of Psychiatry reported a study by Ralph E. Tartar PhD et al thatalso dismissed the Gateway Theory:

Twenty-eight (22.4%)of the participants who used marijuana did not exhibit the gatewaysequence, therebydemonstrating that this pattern is not invariantin drug-using youths. Among youths who did exhibit the gatewaypattern,only delinquency was more strongly related to marijuanause than licit drug use. Specific risk factors associated

withtransition from licit to illicit drugs were not revealed. Thealternative sequence had the same accuracy for predictingsubstanceuse disorder as the gateway sequence. CONCLUSIONS: Pronenessto deviancy and drug availability in theneighborhood promotemarijuana use. These findings support the common liability modelof substance use behavior andsubstance use disorder.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/163/12/2134

In 2010, a University of New Hampshire study showed that while teens who used Marijuana had achance to use hard drugs later on, that is mollified by other factors:

Our results indicate a moderate relation between early teen marijuana use and young adult abuse of other illicitsubstances; however, this association fades from statistical significance with adjustments for stress and life-coursevariables. Likewise, our findings show that any causal influence of teen marijuana use on other illicit substance use iscontingent upon employment status and is short-term, subsiding entirely by the age of 21. In light of these findings, weurge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to thedrug problem.

Sum it all up: The environment you grow up in, stressors from without and within, and a rebelliouspersonality determines Marijuana or drug use. Marijuana use does not determine other substance use.

Consider also that because Marijuana is illegal, some sellers also sell other drugs, which makesmoreprofit than Marijuana. Some people would be prone to try chemical drugs, thinking if they likedMarijuana they d probably like cocaine or heroin as well . The unregulated seller will happily meet thedemand.

It would seem the logical conclusion would be to regulate Marijuana like alcohol. In a legal, controlledenvironment, where the seller is under legal protection and obligation to sell a legal, quality product at areasonable price, contact with true drugs of abuse would be minimized.