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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (8314)	1/4/2006 12:47:31 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541518

re the "gateway" drug claims- paranoia.lycaeum.org "The primary basis for this "gateway hypothesis" is a recent report by the center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), claiming that marijuana users are 85 times more likely than non- marijuana users to try cocaine. This figure, using data from NIDA's 1991 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, is close to being meaningless. It was calculated by dividing the proportion of marijuana users who have ever used cocaine (17%) by the proportion of cocaine users who have never used marijuana (.2%). The high risk-factor obtained is a product not of the fact that so many marijuana users use cocaine but that so many cocaine users used marijuana previously. It is hardly a revelation that people who use one of the least popular drugs are likely to use the more popular ones -- not only marijuana, but also alcohol and tobacco cigarettes. The obvious statistic not publicized by CASA is that most marijuana users -- 83 percent -- never use cocaine. Indeed, for the nearly 70 million Americans who have tried marijuana, it is clearly a "terminus" rather than a "gateway" drug. " ........... "Despite easy availability, marijuana prevalence among 12 to 18 year olds in Holland is only 13.6 percent -- well below the 38 percent use-rate for American high school seniors. More Dutch teenagers use marijuana now than in the past; indeed, lifetime prevalence increased nearly three-fold between 1984 and 1992, from 4.8 to 13.6 percent. However, Dutch officials consider their policy a success because the increase in marijuana use has not been accompanied by an increase in the use of other drugs. For the last decade, the rate of cocaine use among Dutch youth has remained stable, with about .3 percent of 12-18 year olds reporting having used it in the past month. In the United States, the claim that marijuana acts as a gateway to the use of other drugs serves mainly as a rhetorical tool for frightening Americans into believing that winning the war against heroin and cocaine requires waging & battle against the casual use of marijuana. Not only is the claim intellectually indefensible, but the battle is wasteful of resources and fated to failure. "

To: KLP who wrote (8314)	1/5/2006 8:46:24 PM
From: Geoff Altman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541518

The problem they all suggested was that it led them to stronger drugs, and they became addicted in that way. This is drug war propaganda. Fact is if you asked any drug addict what they started out with very few if any would answer pot, most would say alcohol.