Pot As a ‘Gateway’ Drug and Other Fictions
Not a month goes by without a new study on the evils or benefits – or beneficial evils – of marijuana.
USA Today has entered the fray with an interesting story on how millions of baby boomers smoked pot in their youth and quit with little effort, while their kids are having a tougher time kicking the reefer habit.
The story states that:
[S]tudies have shown that when regular pot smokers quit, they do experience withdrawal symptoms, a characteristic used to predict addictiveness. Most users of more addictive drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, started with marijuana, scientists say, and the earlier they started, the greater their risk of becoming addicted.
That is difficult to disagree with until you consider that millions of people of all ages – okay, teenagers on up – smoke marijuana, but there are not millions of hard-drug addicts.
How to explain this?
USA Today rides to the rescue in one of the more astute observations about marijuana that I have read in a long time:
Many studies have documented a link between smoking marijuana and the later use of “harder” drugs such as heroin and cocaine, but that doesn’t necessarily mean marijuana causes addiction to harder drugs.
. . . That’s because it’s impossible to separate marijuana from the environment in which it is smoked . . .
I had a “No Kidding!” moment when I read this, which goes a long way to explaining why those millions of Americans are happily puffing away without being led to great temptation. So simple and so obvious that it defies contradiction. (Not to suggest that people won’t try. Now that the Rev. Ted Haggard is a heterosexual again, he’ll probably give it a shot.)
More here.
33 Responses to “Pot As a ‘Gateway’ Drug and Other Fictions”
If trees are in fact a gateway drug, how come i’m not a cokehead or hard drug addict?
George Carlin had it right, mother’s milk leads to everything.
[...] Original post by Shaun Mullen and software by Elliott Back [...]
Um, what was the topic again?
Not everybody who smokes tobacco gets lung cancer, either, but that doesn’t mean that tobacco isn’t a significant causal risk factor for it.
Apples and Oranges, Pat.
Pat, some 70% of accidents happen at or near the home, should we tell people to avoid home as much as possible to reduce their chances of getting involved in some sort of accident?
Not everybody who drinks alcohol gets lethal liver damage, either, but that doesn’t mean that alcohol isn’t a significant causal risk factor for it. I know what we can do, let’s ban it! Prohibition, baby!
Nor does it mean that it is a significant casual risk factor for it. But then we have sound science showing that indeed it is.
In the case of smoking marijuana leading to harsher drugs the answer is no where near as clear.
The “Gateway Theory” is repeated by politics who don’t seem to understand that correlation does not proove causation.
Example:
Studies have shown a positive correlation between drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
This does not proove that drinking coffee causes you to smoke cigarettes (a ridiculous suggestion), nor does it proove that smoking cigarettes causes people to drink coffee (an equally ridiculous statement).
Yet politicians, grasping at straws to justify their failed War on (some) Drugs have repeatedly rehashed the old “Gateway Theory”, despite both the American Medication Association and the Institute of Medicine disputing this theory.
Yes, numerous studies have shown a correlation between marijuana use and use of other illicit drugs, but as I pointed out before correlation does not imply causation. Any number of confounding factors could explain this correlation.
nicrivera:
Amen, amen, amen!
And of course there is the utter hypocrisy of the War on (Some) Drugs, as you aptly put it, which had landed hundreds of thousands of pot smokers in prison while the nice middle- and upper-class adults who abuse pain killers and mood alterers get go free cards.
I’m not asserting that there is a causal link between marijuana smoking and harder drugs, though I personally believe that there is one. The point of my statement was simply to rebut the suggestion, which I thought quite clear in Shaun’s post and the USA Today article he cited, that the presence of millions of former pot smokers who did not become hard-core drug addicts was by no means proof that there is not a causal connection. He said, specifically:
This is precisely the same that: “It is difficult to disagree with the studies showing that most people with lung cancer started smoking at a young age, until you consider that millions of people of all ages – okay, teenagers on up – smoke tobacco, but there are not millions of lung cancer patients.”
It’s the same argument, and it has no strength as an argument. That doesn’t prove the contrary, far from it, just shows that it’s not a valid point.
Shaun’s “a ha” moment, the revelation by the USA Today article that “it’s impossible to separate marijuana from the environment in which it is smoked,” is just as true, or perhaps false, for tobacco. One cannot conduct a randomized study, assigning some to be smokers and some to be non-smokers at the start of the study. However, one can nevertheless make some headway into separating out the various factors by controlling, in the studies, for different income and educational levels, parental jail experiences, etc. That’s done all the time in medical causation studies. None of the scientists in the story cite any particular studies, however, so I can’t address whether the studies to which they generally referred attempted to control for environmental factors.
Correlation certainly does not establish causation, but it suggests (perhaps “allows for” would be a better phrase) the possibility of causation. It doesn’t rule out causation, and it suggests that one should explore the possibility of causation more closely, to either establish it or rule it out.
PatHMV……you are in the company of liberals who have for some reason taken up the banner of smoke more dope because conservatives are against it.
Ima thinking the new plan should be that jumping off cliffs should be outlawed.
Yep, Upinsmoke… but preaching to the choir doesn’t do much to advance the word, so one must go where the unbelievers are…
Can anyone tell me how many pot related deaths there were in the last few years and still tell me pot needs to be illegal with a straight face? Btw, I don’t smoke pot, I just don’t have an issue with those who do.
Sam, can you tell me on what facts and statistics you base your own opinion that marijuana is harmless?
Sure, Upinsmoke! Everybody, smoke pot ’cause it’ll piss off the conservatives!
What are *you* smoking to come up with this reasoning, anyway? How appropriate your name is to the topic!
Upinsmoke,
You’re a broken record accusing everyone who disagrees with you as being a liberal. I guess the fact the libertarians oppose the War on (some) Drugs means nothing to you.
I don’t oppose the War on (some) Drugs “because conservatives are against it.” I opppose it because:
1) It is unconstitutional
2) It has proven to be a miserable failure
3) I don’t believe politicians should be telling us what we can or cannot smoke.
Neither the facts nor the science nor the economics nor the U.S. Constitution is on the side of those who support the War on (some) Drugs. That’s why, throughout history, they’ve been reduced to peddling pseudoscience such as the “Gateway Theory” and “Reefer Madness.”
Pat and UpInSmoke,
Explain to me why I’m not a junkie then…I’ve been exposed to coke and opiates and perscription pain killers…explain to my like a two year old why trees didn’t lead me to abuse them…please, help me out here.
PatHMV:
I never said that marijuana is not harmful. I never said that there is no casual connection between marijuana and harder drugs.
My point is that for many people (in this case many millions) smoking marijuana for one month or one decade does not lead them to harder drugs or other forms of aberrant behavior. In fact, the primary effect of this drug is m-e-l-l-o-w-n-e-s-s.
Another point: Many drug surveys are notoriously unreliable. The methodology is either flawed or the sponsors of the study were predisposed to a certain conclusion, or both.
That so noted, the body of tobacco studies is immense and shows that irreparable harm can be done to the lungs and heart. The body of marijuana studies is tiny because of the onus that the government puts on them. The body of these studies, such as it is, pretty much confirms what marijuana users will tell you. The stuff makes you feel good while not inhibiting basic functions, and it is a great pain reliever. I know. I procurred marijuana for my terminally ill father, a proud American who was ashamed that the government of the country that he loved would treat him as a f*cking felon if he was caught.
Chuck,
Explain to me the hundreds of thousands of old people who smoked most of their lives who DON’T have lung cancer.
With both kinds of smoking, and with most anything medical, there is rarely one single causal factor. Even with viral infections, not everybody who is exposed dies. But that doesn’t mean that the virus is not the cause of the disease in any given case. Take West Nile virus. Lots of people get exposed to it and suffer no symptoms, or a brief period of fever, while some get really sick and die. The virus most assuredly caused their death, and the fact that it didn’t cause death in so many other cases doesn’t change that fact. In those other cases, other factors kept the individuals from becoming seriously ill.
Shaun, I agree with you that the studies on marijuana use, on both sides, are not terribly reliable. The ones I’ve seen on the anti-side suggest that long-term smoking can have serious consequences on one’s cognitive processes.
Another point: Many drug surveys are notoriously unreliable. The methodology is either flawed or the sponsors of the study were predisposed to a certain conclusion, or both.
And because the study group was high.
Seriously, people who are prone to addiction will, given the circumstances, become addicted. Those who aren’t, very rarely. The #1 gateway drug is alcohol, which is physically addictive and primarily causal in at least 75,000 deaths in the US every year. Sucking smoke into your lungs is not good for you, no matter what kind of smoke it is.
Using tranquilizing agents of any kind on a chronic basis will leave you psychologically dependent, whether or not there is true physical addiction. There is no “safe” mind-altering drug. On the overall scale of things, the major dangers from pot are legal and lifestyle–if nothing else, serious stoners seriously impair their potentials. Like the anti-drug commercial, where the stoners sit safely on Jack’s couch every day. But that it’s less apparently harmful than alcohol addiction (or even binge drinking) doesn’t mean it’s safe.
“Moderation in all things.” It was good advice when Publius Terentius first uttered it, over a century before the Christian era. It still is.
You still haven’t answered my question, Pat. I blaze trees on the weekend. I studied my ass off in college and earned two degrees. On the weekends I blaze. Why am I not on coke, or heroin, or meth, or pills even though I’ve had several hundreds of opportunities over time to do so? Explain that to me. I’m trying to prove your point for you.
But Pat, if the studies on “both sides” are not reliable in terms of marijuana use, why is it that the anti-marijuana side is the side that ultimately gets to set policy? If the government wants to limit an individual’s freedom, doesn’t the burden of proof rest upont he government, and not the individual?
Hypothetical example:
What if the government were to ban coffee on the basis that it causes cancer? Outraged at this suggestion, coffee-drinkers across the nation demand that the government shows them the evidence proving that coffee cancer. In response, the government replies, “Nope. It’s not up to us to prove that coffee causes cancer. If you want your coffee so bad, then it’s up to you to prove that coffee doesn’t cause cancer.”
That is EXACTLY the argument that Drug War proponents are making when they criticize the lack of scientific evidence by Drug War critics–even as the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) uses taxpayer dollars to promote pseudoscience NOT backed up by the medical community.
Well Pat, I didn’t say its harmless, its just not that awful. I know losers who smoke weed, I know successful lawyers and engineers and people in finance that smoke weed too. I also know there haven’t been any recorded deaths linked to weed in several years. While it may not be “harmless”, neither is getting in your car and driving to work. The fact its illegal, that people can be put away for up to 20 years(its legally the same as heroine under the law, if not in sentencing), for its distribution is crazy to me. Booze and Cigarettes are more dangerous any way you slice it, and I certainly don’t want those things outlawed.
Stop Snitchin’ Sam!!! lol
Chuck,
The scary thing is there truly are people out there willing to snitch on their neighbors. In fact, one of them might even be your own state representative.
Here in New Hampshire, we recently had three state representatives sponsor a bill meant to decriminalize marijuana. The problem was that the chairman of the committee was Representative Delmar Burridge, a hardcore proponent of the War on (some) Drugs who wasn’t willing to let the bill pass through committee to be voted upon by the state legislature. As a result, Toby Iselin, a college libertarian who lived in Representative Burridge’s district sent him a letter in the form of an email, politely asking his representative to reconsider his position and allow the bill to pass through committee to be voted on by the legislature.
Later that day, Representative Burridge sent Mr. Iselin a reply in the form of an email, in which he referred to Mr. Iselin–a constituent in his district, mind you–as a “reefer”, called him “dumb”, and then informed him that he would vote no on the bill and see to it that the bill “goes my way.”
Representative Burridge then threatened to forward Mr. Iselin’s email to the local police department, saying that he would “make a great snitch.”
I’m not sure whether Burridge really turned this libertarian college student into the police or whether it was just a veiled threat, but I found myself flabbergasted to hear that a politician would actually insult and threaten his own constituent in such manner.
I and a few others sent letters to the local newspapers making them aware of this event, but I have yet to hear back from any of these newspapers.
Alas, just another day in the life of another out-of-control Drug War apologist drunk on his own political power.
The people who claim that marijuana is a gateway drug never mention whether or not the people who smoked pot drank first. They also never seem to realize that the number of people who use harder drugs who started by smoking pot is not the significant number to an argument about it being a gateway drug. The meaningful numbers would be the percentage of those who use marijuana who move on to other drugs. To claim otherwise is illogical.
That’s an interesting point, Jim.
Between my college days in which I knew quite a few people who were casual pot-users and my post-college days, in which I met a few hard-core drug users, I have to say that I have never met a drug user–not a single one–who hadn’t also been a consumer of alcohol.
Using the logic of “Gateway Theory” proponents, this must be proof positive that alcohol causes people to do drugs. Why haven’t we banned alcohol?
Because neoconservatives also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos.
So control yourselves. Put up those joints and become obedient little Franconians and don’t forget to say Heil Hitler before you go to bed deprived of your favorite Joint.
Remember they have it all wrong. Smoking a joint does not lead to doing harder drugs. It leads to anarchy and social chaos.
Remeber folks, neoconservatives use code words! Anarchy and chaos really mean free thought LOL.
UpInSmoke
Nice, but I’m still waiting…