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Study Finds Alcohol, Not Marijuana, Is the Biggest Gateway Drug For Teens
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study out of the University of Florida which found that alcohol is the biggest "gateway" drug, the use of which increases the likelihood of other drug use. Quoting:
"In the sample of students, alcohol also represented the most commonly used substance, with 72.2 percent of students reporting alcohol consumption at some point in their lifetime. Comparatively, 45 percent of students reported using tobacco, and 43.3 percent cited marijuana use. In addition, the drug use documented found that substance use typically begins with the most socially acceptable drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, then proceeds to marijuana use and finally to other illegal, harder drugs. Moreover, the study showed that students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater likelihood — up to 16 times — of licit and illicit substance use."
Somebody please tag this "obvious".
I started smoking weed far before I ever had a beer. Alcohol's what's being put on a pedestal, so people seek it out.
Who goes straight from the soda pop to the joint? That's pretty messed up. It's like a board game. First you. Must land on the bud light square, then the tequila square, and probably the abusing prescription drugs square.
I was drunk first time I ever smoked.
This should be tagged #noshitsherlock. Seriously, the only reason pot is demonized is because the tobacco and booze industries own too many politicians (and vice-versa).
Anyone who's grown up around people with substance abuse problems already knows this. Everyone I know with drug issues started out with alcohol issues.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
studies also show that nearly 100% of hardcore drug users have previously tried water before moving on. the connection is there is no such thing as a gateway drug but every hysterical person on the planet seems to believe that there is.
The idea of a specific drug being a "gateway" to others is incredibly misleading. Alcohol and weed are the obvious places to start because they're the easiest to obtain. You're going to get to harder drugs eventually if you're that type of person, but no one is just going to start at heroin.
hi
It may be obvious that marijuana is relatively safe to anyone who actually knows about marijuana and alcohol, or cares to research it, but it isn't to those who don't. People who don't know about it are bombarded with media from the war on drugs and conservatives on how bad marijuana is. They really think smoking pot actually does cause harm to those around them, and it should be easy to understand why, with all of the top-down deception happening in the U.S. and other countries.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Science is all about formulating a hypothesis, designing an experiment, performing it, and drawing reasonable conclusions which shape new hypotheses. We shouldn't be saying "WELL DUH," as if they shouldn't have bothered to do the study. Instead we should be happy that we have one more sample of interesting data than we had yesterday.
Also, this isn't the smoking gun that anti-prohibition activists might want. One potential conclusion is that prohibition is working, and that logically we should go ahead and outlaw alcohol and tobacco as well to prevent even more teens from becoming filthy marihuana smokers prone to reefer madness.
Look I'm as willing as anyone to stipulate that the "war on drugs" has been a total bust and a criminal waste of resources. I've told my teenage daughter "the worst thing about pot -- the absolute worst thing -- is what the government can do to you if they catch you with it".
But.
Could the results have anything to do with alcohol being much easier to acquire than pot? This is not an apples - to - apples comparison, and wouldn't have been unless we had never repealed the eighteenth amendment.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
granddaddy's granddaddy was a proper wifebeating drunk in ireland or germany. alcohol is a familiar. therefore it's ok
meanwhile, look at these mexicans and their loco weed! scary otherness! outlaw that stuff!
seriously. this is the reason marijuana is illegal in the usa:
http://www.druglibrary.org/olsen/dpf/whitebread05.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Also 1920s: “Makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” —H.J. Anslinger, Bureau of Narcotics
http://www.uccs.edu/~rmelamed/Physics%20of%20Life/Homepage/Marijuana%20and%20Racism.html
The only reason the hard drugs exist is because of prohibition. If you have a black market you want the product to be as potent and easily concealable/transportable as possible. Back in prohibition times most alcohol was as high of a percentage as was easy to distill. The same with coke and heroin. Chewing Coca leaves or making tea are the preferred method of consumption in the south american countries where it is grown and legal. Smoking Opium is preferred over shooting heroin. In the US Caffeine is preferred in beverages. If caffeine was made illegal you can bet there would be a black market for it as a concentrated powder or pill. The reason it's easier to OD on hard drugs is due in part to how concentrated they are and how irregular the concentration of active pharmaceutic is.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Legalizing doesn't make the psychosis go away. In the Netherlands it's legal and there are plenty of fucked up people smoking themselves into an even more fucked up state, instead of dealing with their crap and getting on with their life without smoking.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Weeks, yes, months, no.
A study at Harvard found no significant effects on memory, etc. after quitting for 28 days.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/10.11/marijuana.html
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
but who's to say that's not a positive effect?
alcohol rips up your short term memory too and people get freaked up on alcohol way more often than from weed, even those with access to both.
anyways - alcohol is on a fucking totally different level than mary-jay. ever heard of anyone spending a week in the hospital from physical effects from weed? yeah, thought so. yet your local hospitals intensive care is filled (if you live in the west) 30% with people there due to drinking(pancreatitis, ulcer etc etc..). it's fucking expensive for society too.
yeah, had bad luck with genes and I liked drinking, so had acute pancreatitis way before hitting 30 - a week in hospital on opiats eating nothing. instead of getting given a packs of tramadol when getting sent home from there I should have been given a pound of some good buds. you know why? eating was enormously difficult and tramadol doesn't really help with that.
what's sick in current western society too is that people who drink and go to doctor complaining anxiety and depression get hooked up with pills that really should not be mixed with alcohol. end result is fucking wrecks who fuck up other peoples life too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Even though there might be a slight drop in what some might perceive as "short term memory" (more like: verbal memory), there are also huge gains in other areas, i.e. creativity. The overall effect is a gain in intelligence and mental ability, not the opposite.
That is exactly what alcoholics say, you know.
I'm all in favour of heavy drinking and drug use, but to pretend they give you enhanced insight, creativity or whatever is really just a load of bollocks.
Get someone to record your drunk or drug-fuelled ideas and then play them back to you when you're sober. If you're Ernest Hemingway or Jimi Hendrix, you might possibly have some gold amongst the dross, but that's only because you're an artist to start with. Most people will just have dross, which is fine as long as they're not kidding themselves it's anything else.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sorry dude - I grew up with burnouts. You have do a lot of weed for a long time, but they SURELY weren't any smarter in any way that was obvious to an external observer. They did seem pretty happy though - just sitting on the couch was a great day for them.
In my experience this is a psychological reaction to the sense of well being that marijuana gives. I have also known a lot of long time cannabis users who display this behaviour, and have even experienced it personally. The drug gives you a feeling that all is well and dampens the desire for having more possessions, status, power, etc. This is nothing to do with intelligence or memory, only with motivation. It may seem on the face of things to be a negative or detrimental effect, especially in a society where the profit motive and greed are used as the primary drivers of progress. But it is precisely for this reason that I believe it can also be a good thing. I think our society is sick and obsessed with having and getting. Either way, this is far too philosophical to justify prohibition, if you start talking about human nature and the structure of society you are beyond the point where banning a single substance makes any sense.