Posted on 12/02/2002 2:42:58 PM PST by Sparta
— WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Countering a basic principle of American anti-drug policies, an independent U.S. study concluded on Monday that marijuana use does not lead teenagers to experiment with hard drugs like heroin or cocaine.
The study by the private, nonprofit RAND Drug Policy Research Center rebutted the theory that marijuana acts as a so-called gateway drug to more harmful narcotics, a key argument against legalizing pot in the United States.
The researchers did not advocate easing restrictions in marijuana, but questioned the focus on this substance in drug control efforts.
Using data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse between 1982 and 1994, the study concluded teenagers who took hard drugs were predisposed to do so whether they tried marijuana first or not.
"Kids get their first opportunity to use marijuana years before they get their first exposure to hard drugs," said Andrew Morral, lead author of the RAND study.
"Marijuana is not a gateway drug. It's just the first thing kids often come across."
Morral said 50 percent of U.S. teenagers had access to marijuana by the age of 16, while the majority had no exposure to cocaine, heroin or hallucinogens until they were 20.
The study, published in the British journal Addiction, does not advocate legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana, which has been linked to side-effects including short-term memory loss.
But given limited resources, Morral said the U.S. government should reconsider the prominence of marijuana in its much-publicized "war on drugs."
"To a certain extent we are diverting resources away from hard drug problems," he said. "Spending money on marijuana control may not be having downstream consequences on the use of hard drugs."
Researchers say predisposition to drug use has been linked to genetic factors and one's environment, including family dynamics and the availability of drugs in the neighborhood.
The way I heard it, God created alcohol so the Irish would not rule the world!
And in the scope of drug abuse, including alcohol and prescription drug abuse, does the cost of attempting to enforce and maintain a prohibition on marijuana have a proportional impact on that problem as a whole?
That is a poor criterion. Some battles are fought to the end. What's the proportional impact of Alamo?
Why is it a poor criterion? Yes, some battles are fought to the end, if they are deemed worthy. What was the criterion under which this particular battle was engaged to start with? The Alamo wasn't fought over white women having sex with jazz musicians.
The environmentalists are a good example! Like the proponents of legalizing drugs, environmentalists don't let the truth stand in their way when it comes to these so-called "studies." One common line of thought between the pro-drug movement, and environmentalists is that the end justifies the means!
Nice try, but nobody is going to buy it. Your "methodology be damned" attitude puts you in the company of the end-justifies-the-means zealots.
What then, exactly, is the RAND Corporation's political agenda? In the study itself, the researchers were careful to state that they neither supported nor opposed laws criminalizing marijuana.
Then why do those who argue for a war on drugs not argue for that war to extend to alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco? If it is indeed a war on drug abuse, then where are the calls to incarcerate those who abuse alcohol in combination with prescription drugs (by the goverment's figures, that includes about 1 in 6 Americans over the age of 60)?
Taken with a grain of salt is one thing. Dismissed outright as meaningless is quite another.
This is a war on drug abuse. Proportionality has nothing to do with it, and expense is not an issue. It is a question of values - you are either for it or against it.
There are a whole bunch of wealthy, well connected people down at the Betty Ford Clinic being treated for alcohol and prescription drug addiction. By your reconing, either all of these people need to be locked up for drug abuse, or their doctors do for fraud for treating them for a non-existing condition. Which is it?
I call 'em like I see 'em!
We all do. Some of us just like to look before we decide what we're seeing.
Human society consists of frail people who aspire to soemthing beyond them but fail. Some vice are unavoidably accepted as a result. The question is where to draw the circle. Alcohol is already within that circle, so with regard to it the question is of expulsion beyond the pale rather than status quo maintanace, which is what the war in drugs is trying to achive. These two tasks are widely different thus.
What you gave is a favorite among many non-example. The prescription drugs are not only within the circle by happenstance but by choice since they play a positive role. Some people will abuse them, as well as anything else, but that's another story altogether. MJ, in contrast, has no positive value other than some substitutable limit use in some cases. Legalization advocates do not suggest even that --- to make it a prescription drug. THis is a non-example.
And you will do this how, exactly, without any sense of proportionality, or any reference as to expense - either monetary or societal?
Wrong---the question really is who are you to draw that circle, and by what authority do you draw it? Seems to me a bunch of pretty enlightened folks got together in the 18th century and crafted a few documents to answer both questions, and in our zeal to engineer a "perfect" society we forgot some of the most basic lessons they tried to teach us, chief among them the notion of limited government.
AS I said, we continue to have a disconnect: you keep putting word in my mouth, and it gets a little tiring to keep pointing that out.
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