Posted on 07/21/2006 5:34:00 AM PDT by Wolfie
Gateway to Nowhere?
The evidence that pot doesn't lead to heroin.
Earlier this month, professor Yasmin Hurd of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine released a study showing that rats exposed to the main ingredient in marijuana during their adolescence showed a greater sensitivity to heroin as adults. The wire lit up with articles announcing confirmation for the "gateway theory"—the claim that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.
It's a theory that has long seemed to make intuitive sense, but remained unproven. The federal government's last National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted in 2004, counted about 97 million Americans who have tried marijuana, compared to 3 million who have tried heroin (166,000 had used it in the previous month). That's not much of a rush through the gateway. And a number of studies have demonstrated that your chances of becoming an addict are higher if addiction runs in your family, or if heroin is readily available in your community, or if you're a risk-taker. These factors can account for the total number of heroin addicts, which could make the gateway theory superfluous.
On close inspection, Hurd's research, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, doesn't show otherwise. For the most part, it's a blow to the gateway theory. To be sure, Hurd found that rats who got high on pot as adolescents used more heroin once they were addicted. But she found no evidence that they were more likely to become addicted than the rats in the control group who'd never been exposed to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuana's main ingredient.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Another article (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1662183/posts) about this same research quotes Dr. Hurd as thinking the results support a gateway effect for alcohol. And the same sort of correlations that exist between pot use and harder drug use are well established to also exist for alcohol use.
It just makes sense to me that if we reduce the number of people who smoke marijuana
Not to quibble, but I here's my thought on this. You want to try to do that, see it as laudable, I won't argue that. It's an opinion.
My take is that, again, it's not the pot. The pot might be step one or two or whatever down the yellow brick road which might lead to harder drugs, and the misery they bring, but it's simply a manifestation of a desire in that person. It could be they are simply rebellious. It could be they are recklessly curious. It could be they are emulating rock stars. Could be they are unhappy. Could be a lot of things. Which is to say even if you prevented someone from trying pot, there's some desire inside that person that I believe will eventually find an outlet.
For me personally, I always knew I wanted to try pot, and LSD. Ever since I was 8 or 9 I knew I would. And meanwhile I never touched coke or heroin, and never wanted to. That's probably not typical. But my point, I guess, is that nothing was going to stop me.
Then again, I smoked my first cigarette at age 8. I was something of a rebel child. So do you try to stop the pot smoking, or the rebellious nature that makes someone willing to try it? Again, I'm rambling, but hopefully you get my train of thought.
There is that, though that's not the point I was trying to make. Yes, people who are willing to break the law for one drug are more likely to be willing to break the law for another drug. Certainly more likely that say, a Glenlivet drinker cruising the streets for a crack cocaine dealer.
Also, there are those who prefer an illegal sub-culture drug instead of a socially acceptable one. Getting high illegally is half the high.
(A side note on that. My friend's wife had been having an affair with this one guy for years. They decided they were in love. She divorced my friend to marry this guy. They never did get married and broke up after 6 months.)
No, my point was that the pot smoker has an addictive personality. He looks to a recreational drug to fulfill some need. That personality would make it more likely for him to move on to another drug.
(Yes, alcoholics also have addictive presonalities but we're not talking about alcohol. The thread is about marijuana.)
I think you would agree that a pot user is more likely to try harder drugs that one who eats carrots or drinks milk, yes?
That, in THAT sense, pot makes you more likely to want to try harder drugs?
Or, more in line with your argument, if Substance A was legal, we'd see no change whatsoever in the use of Substance B.
And if Substance B was legal as some on this board favor? Still no increase?
That people who use one illegal drug are more likely to use another illegal drug than those who are currently using a legal drug like alcohol going out looking for a drug dealer to buy crack.
That's a blanket statement, though, that's not entirely true. Some people smoke pot on a casual basis, others once or twice, and still others get mired in the whole pot subculture and make their life all about smoking pot. I've known all types.
If that's what the "gateway effect" boils down to (and I think it does), then it's no more basis for banning any one potentially addictive substance than any other.
Maybe by the press it was. But the study itself attempted no such thing. The actual title of the study was, "Adolescent Cannabis Exposure Alters Opiate Intake and Opioid Limbic Neuronal Populations in Adult Rats".
The Abstract of the study states, "(Since) Cannabis use is a hypothesized gateway to subsequent abuse of other drugs such as heroin ... (we) ... assessed whether -9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) exposure during adolescence modulates opiate reinforcement and opioid neural systems in adulthood." They gave this a their reason for using cannabis instead some other drug.
As to the "gateway effect", the authors of this study referred to four other studies that supported that:
"Several epidemiological studies report that early regular use of cannabis increases the risk of initiation of the use of other illicit drugs (Agrawal et al, 2004; Fergusson and Horwood, 2000; Lynskey et al, 2003; Yamaguchi and Kandel, 1984), supporting the cannabis gateway hypothesis of cannabis as a steppingstone toward abuse of other drugs."
The article that started this discussion does not address the likelihood factor at all. There is no data that you point to that supports this claim. All you state is that it is "common sense" - which is the "intuitive sense" that the article refers to, the "intuitive sense that the study actually cannot verify.
You are arguing that there is a correlation between marijuana usage and heroin usage. There is also a correlation between beer and heroin, between cigarettes and heroin, between addicted family members and heroin. Correlation is NOT causation, however. You could stop all people from smoking pot for the rest of time, and heroin use would still continue. There was no marijuana available in 19th century China, but opium addiction still flourished. Would abolishing rice wine, which most opium smokers drank at some point before they smoked, have ended the opium blight on society?
An example of correlation: eating fatty foods is correlated to colon cancer. Does this mean eating fatty foods causes colon cancer? No. Does this mean that the fat molecules prevent your white blood cells from attacking the cancer? No. Does this mean that the fat molecules counteract the anticarcinogenic action of the broccoli you also ate? No. We can make up any explanation we like, and we may even like one explanation more than another, for reasons totally unrelated to the evidence. But we do not know what the relationship between the two is, and cannot make a factual claim about it.
Now hearing about this correlation may change your opinion on your personal consumption of fried chicken and french fries. Fine. You don't have proof that fried chicken and french fries will give you colon cancer, but you make the choice not to take the chance.
Does this change in diet mean you will not get colon cancer? No. Does the correlation mean that fatty foods should be banned? No. Can you say anything factual at all about fatty foods and cancer? Just that they seem to be related, but, at this point, we have no scientific evidence what that relationship means.
But that is the difference between a claim of fact and an opinion, right? Opinion is based on personal belief. It may have no basis in fact at all. It may even cause a person to refuse to examine additional factual evidence because they feel their opinions are threatened.
Of course I can have an opinion without "absolute, incontrovertible fact". That is a straw man argument. I can have an opinion without knowing any facts at all! My opinion is that adultery destroys marriages. I have no statistics on the correlation between the two. I haven't defined my terms, such as "adultery" or "destruction." My opinion is based purely on my own personal beliefs.
But I would never make a factual claim that adultery destroys marriages without collecting some evidence, defining my terms, and examining some alternative explanations. And, no, I would never just utter a certainty, as you have done, on the basis of "common sense."
The study referenced in the above article cited four previous scientific studies that "supported the cannabis gateway hypothesis of cannabis as a steppingstone toward abuse of other drugs".
Do you have one study that shows milk as a steppingstone to heroin use?
Smarta$$ troll wasting bandwidth and my time.
But it does lead to:
massive weight gain ("the munchies")
And a lot of remorse (waking up with coyote ugly women)
I didn't suggest that it be the basis for banning. I am suggesting, however, that it's a darn good reason not to legalize it.
That's certainly possible, even likely. The researchers in the study said likewise:
"Apparent links could be noncausal given that the same characteristics may cause vulnerability to use cannabis as other illicit drugs, that is, genetic predisposition, peer-pressure, drug availability and risk-taking behavior."
But they also say, "However, the associations could also reflect actual neurobiological disturbances to early cannabis exposure that makes individuals more vulnerable to the reinforcing effects of other drugs."
"So do you try to stop the pot smoking, or the rebellious nature that makes someone willing to try it?"
It depends on what the rebellious nature can lead to. Sometimes it's harmless. Sometime it leads to very nasty things later.
All the authors are trying to say is that, according to this study, adolescent cannabis exposure contributes to greater heroin intake in adulthood. Something to be aware of.
What about the hundreds of thousands of pot smokers who have never tried heroin and never will?
So you are saying that alcohol's legality is mitigating it's effect as a gateway drug?
Did you know that Ronald Reagan called libertarianism the "heart and soul of conservatism"?
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