{"id":381,"date":"2008-09-19T10:43:52","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T09:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=381"},"modified":"2008-09-19T10:43:52","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T09:43:52","slug":"is-cannabis-a-gateway-drug-it-can-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2008\/09\/is-cannabis-a-gateway-drug-it-can-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Cannabis A Gateway Drug? &#8211; It Can Be!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Of course they won\u2019t all progress, but almost 100% of heroin users started on it.<br \/>\nThere is a frequent pattern of drug use: \u2014<br \/>\nBeer\/wine\u2014&gt;cigarettes\/spirits\u2014&gt;marjjuana\u2014&gt; other illegal drugs.<br \/>\nProfessor Denise Kandel and others of the Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Public<br \/>\nHealth, Columbia University, New York, have found this progression in most of their<br \/>\ninvestigations, published in various journals from the seventies till the present, including,<br \/>\nScience, The American Journal of Public Heal\/h, Journal of Drug Issues.<\/p>\n<p>We must try to stop our children from smoking in the first place. Smokers have already mastered the required technique.<br \/>\nA MORI poll in 1991 found that 50% of smokers had tried an illegal drug compared to only 2% of non-smokers.<\/p>\n<p>The more they use, the greater the risk of pro gression.<br \/>\nOf those who had used cannabis more than 1000 times, 90% went onto use other drugs.<br \/>\nBetween 100 and 1000 times, it was 79%, dropping to 51% between 10 and 100 times.<br \/>\nEven 1 to 9 times saw 16% go down the slippery slope whereas only 6% of non-users<br \/>\nsuccumbed (Denise Kandel, 1986)<\/p>\n<p>Use of cannabis and cocaine have been linked in several studies.<br \/>\n\u201cThe linkage between marijuana use and later heroin or cocaine use is 10 times greater than the evidence of linkage between cigarette smoking and lung cancer\u201d, Clayton &amp; Voss, US Journal of Drug &amp; Alcohol Dependence, 1982. And from Science, 1997. &#8216;22% of Dutch youths over 12 who have ever used cannabis, have also used cocaine&#8217;. &#8216;The main predictor of crack cocaine use is previous daily use of pot&#8217; (PRIDE, USA)<\/p>\n<p>Recent research from Australia and New Zealand confirms all this.<br \/>\nYoungsters smoking one joint a week are 60 times more likely to progress, the strongest association is among 14-15 year olds (Fergusson and Horwood, Addiction 2000). Genetics was ruled out when a study of 300 pairs of same-sex twins discovered those using cannabis before the age of 17, were 2-5 times more likely to have drug problems and dependency later in life, than their non-using siblings (Linskey etal, JAMA 2003)<\/p>\n<p>Some users say they are looking for a bigger and better &#8216;high&#8217;,<br \/>\n\u00a0rather like small children jumping from a higher step or swinging ever higher.<br \/>\nWhen people become tolerant of a &#8216;high&#8217;, they seek a more potent drug, or the withdrawal symptoms from one can be alleviated by use of another (H. Ashton, Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 2002)<\/p>\n<p>Drug dealers are often blamed for pushing other drugs.<br \/>\nThe Dutch &#8216;experiment&#8217; was supposed to separate the markets of &#8216;soft&#8217; and &#8216;hard&#8217; drugs. This has not stopped the progression. Holland has twice as many heroin addicts per capita than Britain (Trimbos Institute 1997; Schwartz R, Hospital Practice May 1991)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of course they won\u2019t all progress, but almost 100% of heroin users started on it. There is a frequent pattern of drug use: \u2014 Beer\/wine\u2014&gt;cigarettes\/spirits\u2014&gt;marjjuana\u2014&gt; other illegal drugs. Professor Denise Kandel and others of the Dept. of Psychiatry and School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, have found this progression in most of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-specifics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}