Posted on 11/30/2018 7:03:52 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A new study looking at alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use among adolescents gives some interesting and helpful conclusions. Well, helpful conclusions if people will be willing to remove their cultural blinders concerning marijuana. Since the politically and culturally popular thing to do is to extol the virtues of the recreational use of marijuana, the study's sharp gateway-drug implications will most likely be a warning that is derided and unheeded.
Frankly, I don't really care if people smoke weed or not. To be clear, if asked, I'll warn against it. What bugs me, though, is that many who do choose to smoke weed deceive themselves (and others) about marijuana's potential for harm.
When I worked in a substance awareness program targeting eighth-graders, my co-workers and I could predict the pushback we would receive from the students: marijuana isn't addictive... marijuana doesn't cause any real, long-term, negative effects, blah, blah, blah.
While it's true that marijuana doesn't bring the same negative effects as, say, methamphetamine, it's not true that marijuana is completely devoid of any negative effects. For starters, it is addictive. Substances don't have to be physically addictive to be addictive. As my colleagues and I would tell the protesting students, shopping can be addictive.
A negative effect that comes from ingesting marijuana that many users (and non-users) scoff at is the drug's potential to be a gateway drug. However, the study linked to above concludes, "The implications of the more prominent role of marijuana in the early stages of drug use sequences are important to continue tracking."
The twenty-year study concluded that while cigarette and alcohol use among adolescents has decreased, marijuana use among adolescents has remained basically the same. What's interesting is that "the traditional gateway sequence is changing, with marijuana increasingly accounting for the first substance used among adolescents."
The study also acknowledges that adolescents who smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol have a greater risk of turning to marijuana. The authors of the study write:
Those who do engage in alcohol and cigarette use are increasingly a high-risk group for marijuana use. National data among adults with reconstructed life histories has demonstrated similar findings among today’s cohorts of cigarette users, in that they are also more likely to have psychiatric disorders and other drug disorders compared with previous cohorts of smokers ( Talati et al., 2016, 2013). Such findings are in line with hypotheses about ‘hardening’ of drug users.
The bad news for those adolescents who begin with marijuana as well as for those who are in a high-risk group for marijuana use due to their cigarette or alcohol use is that:
Marijuana initiation may also affect subsequent drug use through similar biological mechanisms that have been proposed for other substances; emerging evidence from animal models suggests that THC exposure early in adolescence influences reward sensitivity to other drugs including nicotine ( Dinieri and Hurd, 2012; Panlilio et al., 2013; Pistis et al., 2004), and that adult marijuana use who initiated in adolescence have impairments in memory and prefrontal as well hippocampal volume ( Batalla et al., 2013; Filbey and Yezhuvath, 2013). Existing epidemiological data suggest that marijuana use increases the risk of subsequent cigarette initiation, supporting the hypothesis that marijuana could be causally associated with subsequent polysubstance use ( Nguyen et al., 2018).
I’ve been arguing with potheads about these issues for years. It’s POINTLESS. They’re POTHEADS.
Rational thinking is out of the picture.
ALL us old hippies will "amen": that statement.
Alcohol is MUCH MORE a gateway drug than weed
At least it was for the vast majority of regular users at my Cheech and Chong high-school.
Does it really matter when they are both gateway drugs?
I would discourage anyone from indulging in this behavior. That’s my personal opinion.
But, as to whether the federal government should continue to make this behavior illegal ... I think it’s time to face reality and just give that up.
Society may eventually decide that this behavior should be abandoned. That would be nice. But I no longer see it as a matter for jurisprudence.
Who said weed is harmless?
Both together are awful.
You have American politicians advocating the legalization of marijuana. They know full well that young people will regularly intoxicate themselves with alcohol, marijuana or both. Of course there will be more opioid addicts, children with autism ( what do you think happens when you soak ovaries with alcohol and marijuana,and use during pregnancy), accidents and social dissolution (try living in a family with a “casual” drug user). Hedonism is a precursor of cultural decline.
I don’t need a study.
I have many friends who ruined their lives with hard drugs.
There wasn’t one of them who didn’t start off as a pothead.
For your interest.
Neither are gateway drugs, in my opinion.
A person either has a gateway personality, or not.
One person may smoke a small amount of weed per week no problem.
Another person may smoke a larger amount per week and then move on to pills, coke and heroin.
Everyone is different. It isn’t the drug, it’s the person. Some people’s addictive nature and potential for poor decision making is worse than others.
The only ‘gateway’ is the inclination of the individual.
Reams of excellent clinical research on the biochemical effects of psychoactive components of true marijuana (ie. NOT Hemp cannabis) exist and have once again been re-confirmed. This is what proper good Science looks like. As opposed to “man caused global warming... because we “believe it” and NEED to believe it to be true for ... investment purposes”.
The fraud that is “medical” marijuana is correctly being identified— and properly re-structured by pharmaco-chemistry to elucidate the components of cannabis that have true clinically significant medical uses. As seen with the exploding market of over the counter Cannabidiol extract products, CBD. CBD is a component now of an approved seizure disorder medication for special inoperable seizures in children. CBD oral admin-— huge potential and proven efficacy for NON-opioid pain relief, with a clean metabolite excretion profile that is particularly of interest in older folks.
Glad this came out, yet again, the psycho- habituation aspect of addictive drugs being sought because an individual has the receptor mediated NEED for more and better “highs”, opioid receptors that demand much more than habituated psychoactive THC. The genomic schizoid trigger regions have been identified, and cross referenced, particularly in the UK.
It’s a gateway to being a liberal leftist for sure.
>Hedonism is a precursor of cultural decline
that ship has sailed.
“I’ve been arguing with potheads about these issues for years. It’s POINTLESS. They’re POTHEADS.
Rational thinking is out of the picture.”
—
No kidding. I actually had one tell me he’d been smoking pot for 20 years and he hadn’t become addicted in all those years. True story.
Everything is a gateway drug. The problem is with the souls of men, with their hearts and their minds. They’ll sniff glue, lick frogs and eat tide because our society has forgotten righteousness.
Re-look at the meaning of “gateway” in the clinical analysis.
Booze is along for the ride with the “gateway” psychoactive THC component of pot— the receptors for booze are NOT the same ones that have to be satisfied in the brain and in the peripheral areas of a devotee.
Lessens inhibitions, booze does— and thus lessens any self discipline to NOT continue to “toke up”. Booze is merely a fellow traveler in this analysis. And, booze on it’s on is incredibly destructive to Society in general— but Carry Nation and puritanical legal stops would never prevent something that people can MAKE on their own.
Even the American Indians reserved tobacco for religious ceremony— but thanks to our Colonial rulers— the cash demand for tobacco in UK and Europe converted a simple religious plant into a hugely addictive and destructive... industry. Brilliant.
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