Risk Of Marijuana's 'Gateway Effect' Overblown

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New research from the University of New Hampshire shows that the "gateway effect" of marijuana "" that teenagers who use marijuana are more likely to move on to harder illicit drugs as young adults "" is overblown.

Whether teenagers who smoked pot will use other illicit drugs as young adults has more to do with life factors such as employment status and stress, according to the new research. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether someone will use other illicit drugs is their race/ethnicity, not whether they ever used marijuana.

Conducted by UNH associate professors of sociology Karen Van Gundy and Cesar Rebellon, the research appears in the September 2010, issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior in the article, "A Life-course Perspective on the 'Gateway Hypothesis.' "

"In light of these findings, we urge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the 'drug problem,' " Van Gundy and Rebellon say.

The researchers used survey data from 1,286 young adults who attended Miami-Dade public schools in the 1990s. Within the final sample, 26 percent of the respondents are African American, 44 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are non-Hispanic white.

The researchers found that young adults who did not graduate from high school or attend college were more likely to have used marijuana as teenagers and other illicit substances in young adulthood. In addition, those who used marijuana as teenagers and were unemployed following high school were more likely to use other illicit drugs.

However, the association between teenage marijuana use and other illicit drug abuse by young adults fades once stresses, such as unemployment, diminish.

"Employment in young adulthood can protect people by 'closing' the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities," Van Gundy says.

In addition, once young adults reach age 21, the gateway effect subsides entirely.

"While marijuana use may serve as a gateway to other illicit drug use in adolescence, our results indicate that the effect may be short-lived, subsiding by age 21. Interestingly, age emerges as a protective status above and beyond the other life statuses and conditions considered here. We find that respondents 'age out' of marijuana's gateway effect regardless of early teen stress exposure or education, work, or family statuses," the researchers say.

The researchers found that the strongest predictor of other illicit drug use appears to be race-ethnicity, not prior use of marijuana. Non-Hispanic whites show the greatest odds of other illicit substance use, followed by Hispanics, and then by African Americans.

Source: Risk Of Marijuana's 'Gateway Effect' Overblown - Science News - redOrbit
 
Cannabis related deaths in the USA average zero.

There is not one death certificate that I have ever seen that attributes the cause of death to the ingestion of cannabis.
 
So why not introduce our kids in HS how to grow weed and other farming techniques while we're at it. If they grow their own they'll have a whole new respect for the end product. Whether it be food or meds.
 
The planet is expected to have 10 Billion people on it by 2050. Teaching kids something useful that will inspire them and give them a sense of purpose would be a way of correcting some of the ills with our school systems while creating jobs and a new generation of entrepreneurs.
 
Any why not. The way things are going isn't working. College kids come out with degrees that saddle them with 6 figure debt and they can't find jobs with these degrees.
 
It's long overdue that a dose of a real world message get to these kids early on. The problem is not that cannabis or beer acts as a gateway drug the problem is, and more so for minorities, that it is fundamental lack of opportunity that creates an environment where youth has a sense of hopelessness and they see no merit in their future. Experimenting with increased levels of mind altering chemicals does not constitute a threat to their future. They think of themselves as bullet proof anyway.
 
Some of these kids are college material. No question. What do many of them get degrees in? Liberal arts, Political Science, etc.. unless you're planning on going into teaching there won't be any work.

As a base get a degree or at least experience in math, accounting and business.

But as a major this country needs more mechanical and electrical engineers as well as doctors. Come out with a degree in these disciplines and live in this country and you'll find work here.
 
But the sad reality is if you go into a UC CA classroom you are likely to see 70-80% of these students are foreigners. Middle Eastern and Asian descent. They take these advanced degrees and with the information we have given them go back to Iran and build weapons grade systems that without our having given it to them they would have wallowed in years of missteps before they were recognized as any kind of threat.
 
So the very agencies that qualify what is a gateway and what is not should be taking a look at how they protect us in our overall best interests. That is the security of our country, at home and at our embassies and the future of our countries economic interests.

The fact that today China can declare air space providence over the Japanese Sensaku Islands, mainly because of the oil rights surrounding the islands and the US government won't intercede as they claim it is a regional issue says more about our unwillingness to protect democracy worldwide and the fact that China holds Trillions in US Debt and that China now has a submarine and air craft carrier fleet that represents a real threat to US national interests. Let's not forget that many of the Chinese engineers got their degrees from US universities. Now they use that knowledge to threaten us, at the moment tacitly, that they are a force that will not be told how to conduct their affairs. And why should they?
 
We as a country import 40X more goods than we export. And with China being the major source of our imported goods to have an economic embargo with China would do more to harm the US than China.
 
The rest of the world will prize their children's development in math and science. They will work their children through 6 day a week class schedules that aren't over at school since there is homework to be done when they do get home.
 
I started smoking weed when I was a teen (52 now)and it has never led me to go and try stronger drugs.

GATEWAY drug my ass. consider the sources that supply there useless info.
 
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