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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".
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).
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.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that alcohol is some magic gateway drug, (correlation does not imply causation) but that people with substance abuse problems naturally gravitate first to legal (and hence more easily acquirable) substances.
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
I've always maintained that the problem is the person, not the substance. Those who abuse drugs (of any kind) are usually carrying emotional or mental health issues they are trying to mask or self medicate through the use of those substances. Alcohol can turn people into assholes, but not everyone turns into an asshole with alcohol. The same goes for other drugs. In fact, people who become sociopaths or who ruin their (or others') lives through substance abuse are the exception and not the rule. There are a lot of people who have smoked pot in their teens and who have never touched it again. There are many, many people who drink regularly and don't beat their wives and children. But there will always be some element of society that loves to hop on one or two unfortunate examples to use them to bully others - because they like telling people what to do. These are the ones who think you should live the way they live because, of course, they are the ones who are right.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
Goatse addiction-now that's an illness that I hope nobody else has to go through.
A couple years ago some of my "friends told me about this nasty website called goatse. They told me to never go there because no amount of brain bleach will make you unsee it. So I avoided it. Whenever I saw a suspicious link I left it alone so as to keep my mind pure. Yet all this time I spent wondering how something could be so disgusting that it would be unforgettable.
One day I broke. I was bored. There was nothing on TV. My favorite message boards were dead. I was about to go insane from the lack of anything to do. Then the thought popped into my head "why not go look at goatse; it can't be THAT bad." Initially I resisted. My friends had warned me well, but eventually I broke. I slowly typed goatse.cx into my browser bar trembling with fear and anticipation. When the page loaded I was horrified. It was even worse than my friends said. I found myself retching because it was so repulsive. Yet I could not tear my eyes away There was something hypnotizing about that distended rectum with hands gripping the sides.
Soon I was spending hours a day on that site doing nothing but staring into that gaping maw. I could not figure out why, but I was hooked on it. The hole had me transfixed. Before long I started adorning my possessions with goatse paraphernalia. While I hid it initially from my friends and family, once I started doing that they knew. Slowly they started to drift away from me one by one. Eventually the only person I saw was my roommate, and that was rarely. After some time I walked back to my computer to gaze at the spread buttocks for several hours when I found my roommate blocking access to my computer. He looked me squarely in the eyes and said "You've got a problem." Initially I protested, but deep down I knew he was right, so after a heated discussion I deleted all the images off my hard drive, peeled the stickers off the lid of my laptop and took the posters down from the walls.
I've been goatse-free for three years now and I do not want to revisit that part of my life ever again.
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
Yes but that's kinda the point. Alcohol fucks people up even worse, yet it's legal. It's inconsistent to claim that marijuana is illegal because of outcome A when alcohol is legal but causes outcome A in even more people. We need to either ban alcohol, or legalize marijuana - and banning alcohol just doesn't work.