See
USA Today Runs A Good Article On The "Gateway Theory" Following IOM Report

THE GRASS ROOTS OF TEEN DRUG ABUSE

"FEDS GO TO POT" screamed the New York Post headline last week, after the Institute of Medicine released its report "Marijuana and Medicine:

Assessing the Science Base." The Associated Press reported that the IOM had found "there was no conclusive evidence that marijuana use leads to harder drugs."

A look at the actual report shows that these press accounts are misleading. Consider these words from the report: "Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana-usually before they are of legal age. In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a ‘gateway’ drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common and is rarely the first, ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use."
(Marijuananews note: Unlike the Drug Czar’s report on AOL, Califano quotes what the IOM actually says.)
See
AOL and Disney Help The Drug Czar Encourage Children To Use Hard Drugs
By Getting Their Parents to Lie To Them About Marijuana.
Cynical Distortion Of IOM Report

Those are the words that precede the tentatively worded statement the AP paraphrased: "There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."

The report notes, however, that "people who enjoy the effects of marijuana are, logically, more likely to be willing to try other mind-altering drugs than are people who are not willing to try marijuana or who dislike its effects. In other words, many of the factors associated with a willingness to use marijuana are, presumably, the same as those associated with a willingness to use other illicit drugs." And the report recognizes "intensity" of marijuana use as increasing the risk of progression to other drugs.
(Marijuananews note: Yes. The AP and other wire stories accurately reported what the IOM said. There is no proof of causality. Califano does not refute that, in stead he is arguing is that there is a high correlation between hard drug use and prior marijuana use in DEAland. No one questions that. In short, he is objecting to the media accurately reporting what the IOM said.)

The medical benefits and risks of marijuana-the subjects to which the report devotes most of its attention -are matters for doctors, scientists and the Food and Drug Administration.
(Marijuananews note: Notice that he does not mention the patients, or acknowledge that doctors who want to prescribe it are subject to prosecution. An oversight, no doubt.)
The potential of marijuana as a gateway drug is a matter of concern for teenagers, parents and policy makers.

The IOM’s brief, three-page discussion of the gateway issue fails to discuss mounting statistical and scientific evidence that children who smoke pot are much likelier than those who don’t to use drugs like cocaine, heroin and LSD. And the press coverage has been dangerously deceptive.

The Institute of Medicine study fails to discuss mounting scientific evidence that children who smoke pot are much likelier to use drugs like cocaine, heroin and LSD.

I have not read or heard in any news report the important finding that "the ... interpretation . . . that marijuana serves as a gateway to the world of illegal drugs in which youths have greater opportunity and are under greater social pressure to try other illegal drugs ... is the interpretation most often used in the scientific literature, and is supported by-although not proven by the available data."

(Marijuananews note: This is really bizarre. He does not recognized that this is an argument for legalizing marijuana. Alcohol and tobacco are also "gateway drugs" in that they almost always precede hard drug use, but no one says that they serve "as a gateway to the world of illegal drugs in which youths have greater opportunity and are under greater social pressure to try other illegal drugs." Why is it that only marijuana serves as the gateway to "gateway to the world of illegal drugs?" Because of the three, only marijuana is illegal!)
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."

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which I head, analyzed the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 1995 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 1l, 000 ninth-through 12^th graders, adjusting for other risk factors such as repeated acts of violence and sexual promiscuity.

The correlations are potent:

*Teens who drank and smoked cigarettes at least once in the past month are 30 times more likely to smoke marijuana than those who didn’t.
(Marijuananews note: Are correlations really "potent." There are many high correlations that are impotent, i.e. meaningless. I will wager that there is a very high correlation between wearing sneakers and violent crime. Most violent crime is committed by young men, who tend to wear this type of shoe. Also there is probably a very low correlation between violent crime and wearing wing-tips. Could we reduce crime by outlawing sneakers?)

*Teens who drank, smoked cigarettes, and used marijuana at least once in the past month are more than 16 times as likely to use another drug like cocaine, heroin or LSD.

To appreciate the significance of these relationships, consider this:

Most people who smoke pot do not move on to other drugs, but then only 5% to 7% of cigarette smokers get lung cancer.
(Marijuananews note: This is an ironic point in this context, inasmuch as the IOM used cancer risk as the major excuse for not allowing patients to smoke marijuana.)
The point for parents and teens is that those youngsters who smoke pot are at vastly greater risk of moving on to harder drugs.

(Marijuananews note: He moves from correlation to "risk" without proving causality, which the IOM says in unproven, which is the point here.)

CASA’S studies reveal that the younger and more often a teen smokes pot, the more likely that teen is to use cocaine. A child who uses marijuana before age 12 is 42 times more likely to use cocaine, heroin or other drugs than one who first smokes pot after age 16.
(Marijuananews note: Could it be that a child who uses marijuana before the age of 12 has other problems, such as emotional disturbance or parental neglect, that are the causes of both the early marijuana use and the subsequent hard drug use?)

The IOM report also fails to discuss findings of recent scientific studies that suggest some of the reasons for this high correlation. Studies in Italy reveal that marijuana affects levels of dopamine (the substance that gives pleasure) in the brain in a manner similar to heroin.

(Marijuananews note: Gotcha! Califano "fails to discuss findings" of even more "recent scientific studies" that dopamine "rather than being the key player in the pleasure process, is only a messenger and one of several factors," according to a study published in the journal Nature. That is the problem when you play the "Latest Research" game. Someone may have the Really, Really Latest Research! See the article below.)

Gaetana DiChiara, the physician who led this work at the University of Cagliari, indicates that marijuana may prime the brain to seek substances that act in a similar way. Studies in the U.S. have found that nicotine, cocaine and alcohol also affect dopamine levels.
(Marijuananews note: As do many other pleasant experiences. This is another example of twisting a correlation with marijuana into causality.)

(Marijuananews note: This is really dishonest. The rats were not merely "subjected to immediate cannabis withdrawal" but were injected with large does of synthetic THC over a period of several days and then injected with a another synthetic drug that blockrd the THC receptor sites. The originator of this trick, Dr. Billy Martin, Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, Department of Pharmacology, Richmond, Virginia, was one of the principle investigators for the IOM report, and it made reference to the point that "withdrawal symptoms can be observed in animals, but appear to be mild compared to opiates or benzodiazepines, such as diazepam (Valium)")

Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has estimated that at least 100,000 individuals are in treatment because of marijuana use. Most are believed to be teenagers.
(Marijuananews note: Leshner is a prohibitionist propagandist, so citing him proves nothing. In any case, there is absolutely no hard data to support this number. However, let’s take it at face value.

Our concern should be to prevent teen drug use.
(Marijuananews note: If that is his concern, and it should not be our only concern, then why does he not take an honest look at what the Dutch are doing? Because maintaining marijuana prohibition is his concern. More precisely, his concern is not having to admit to having been so horribly wrong.)
See
NORML Director Explains To The Dutch
Why Their Drugs Policy Threatens DEAland Prohibitionists – Great Article
and
Califano And Friends Lie To Us About Marijuana And Holland -- the Mfiles
and
New Dutch Drug Use Data Show Success Of Policies of Truth And Tolerance
Full Text of Press Release And Tables With Data On All Drugs

We know that someone who gets to age 21 without smoking, using drugs or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so.
(Marijuananews note: No, we do not know that. We know that in our society, substance abuse usually starts before 21 for a variety of reasons. We do not know how to prevent substance abuse by children who have problems. We do know that arresting eleven million marijuana users has not prevented these problems.)

The incompleteness of the IOM report and the press’s sloppy summaries of it must not be permitted to dilute that message.

Mr. Califano is President of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. He was Secretary of Health, Education And Welfare from 1977 to 1979.

The naturally produced brain chemical, rather than being the key player in the pleasure process, is only a messenger and one of several factors, according to the study, published today in the journal Nature.

"It certainly says the picture is much more complicated than being just dopamine alone, and it will lead to the search for other chemical substances in the brain," said the study’s author, chemist R. Mark Wightman of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Dopamine, first discovered in 1957, came into prominence in the early 1960s when scientists discovered that several antipsychotic drugs targeted it. In the late 1970s, researchers began looking into its role in drug addiction and found that cocaine, heroin and other addictive drugs increase levels of dopamine in the body.

The latest study is another that casts doubt on that approach.

The researchers attached electrodes to the brains of rats, which produced dopamine when they were shocked. The rats were then trained to shock themselves.

Dopamine appears to be related to "novelty, predictability or some other aspect of the reward process, rather than to hedonism itself," the researchers reported.

What chemical or process is ultimately responsible for the pleasure is "not really clear right now. That’s something that’s a real topic of investigation," said Anthony Grace, a professor of neuroscience and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study.