DEBATE IS RE-IGNITED: IS POT A ‘GATEWAY’?

March 22, 1999
From USA Today
editor@usatoday.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nfront.htm

By Patrick McMahon, USA TODAY

The major study on medical marijuana released last week did more than conclude that marijuana may help treat certain sick and dying patients. Eminent researchers also tackled the long-debated question of whether marijuana leads users to abuse hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Their finding: "There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."

This statement elicited sweet satisfaction from marijuana proponents, but it infuriated many drug abuse experts and prosecutors and some lawmakers.

"In my mind, there is no question about the statistical relationship" between marijuana and the abuse of hard drugs, says Joseph Califano, a former U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Califano cites studies showing that a child who uses marijuana before age 12 is 79 times more likely to use harder drugs than a child who never smokes marijuana.

Califano says the connection is more statistically significant than the 1964 surgeon general’s report that first linked smoking and lung cancer. "To say there is no relationship - that is preposterous."

Califano is currently head of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University in New York, perhaps the nation’s foremost promoter of the "gateway theory" - that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to heroin and cocaine.

The medical director of CASA, Herbert Kleber, says research on the brain’s pleasure center may provide more evidence of a direct link. "We don’t have the smoking gun yet, but we are closing in," he says.
(Marijuananews note: Kleber was one of the official "reviewers" of the IOM report.

He is admitting that there is no proof, which is what they demand to stop arresting medical users, but we have to keep arresting people until they can prove that marijuana is a "gateway drug?" Even if it takes forever. Interesting logic! )

Portland, Ore., medical professor John Benson, co-director of the Institute of Medicine study, defends it, but also stresses, "We are, of course, worried about the association between marijuana and further drug use, particularly among teen-agers."

He also noted that the study, commissioned and paid for by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "came out strongly against smoking" marijuana.

In the report, Benson and University of Michigan researcher Stanley Watson say that because marijuana use usually precedes hard drugs , "it is indeed a ‘gateway’ drug" in some sense.

But, they continued, "because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common and rarely the first ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use."

The factors that best predict use of illicit drugs beyond marijuana are actually "age of first alcohol or nicotine use, heavy marijuana use and psychiatric disorders," the study said.

The most frequent explanation for marijuana as a gateway drug is that youths who use it enter the world of illegal drugs, where they have a greater opportunity and are under greater social pressure to try other illegal drugs.

(Marijuananews note: Of course, this makes the "gateway" a function of marijuana prohibition, not of marijuana use.)
See
"Here, if you want cannabis you go to a coffee shop.
In other countries if you want it you have to go to a man who might try to sell you heroin or cocaine as well."

This interpretation "is supported by - although not proven by - the available data," the report conceded.

But, the report also argued, the data is unconvincing. Too often, the data provides no indication of what proportion of marijuana users become serious drug abusers, only that drug abusers usually use marijuana before they smoke crack cocaine or inject heroin.

Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project says that if there is anything about marijuana that drives teen-agers to hard drugs, it is the likelihood they’ll have to buy it from drug dealers. His group, based in Washington, D.C., seeks to eliminate jail penalties for marijuana use.

Zimmer favors an approach used in the Netherlands that separates the marijuana market from other drugs by allowing small amounts of marijuana to be sold to people over 18 at certain businesses.

Zimmer’s attitude is not shared by most law enforcement officials. "People who work in our drug court tell me" that marijuana and more serious drugs are connected, says Doug Moreau, the district attorney in Baton Rouge.

"It’s only common sense. There’s a natural human tendency" once you are a regular user of one drug "to start looking for something that gives you a bigger kick."

(Marijuananews note: Therefore ice tea and colas are really the "gateway drugs.")

Mica announced plans to hold hearings in late April on drug legalization and medical marijuana, and called the Institute of Medicine report "the biggest waste of money in the entire war on drugs."