On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged that the consumption of cannabis does not lead a person to use harder drugs. Lynch’s public statement may be the clearest repudiation yet of the mythical “gateway theory” originally fabricated by drug czar Harry Anslinger in the 1950s.
Lynch made the statement during a town hall meeting in Richmond, Ky., where she discussed the dangers of opioid abuse with a group of high-school teens. In the course of that discussion, talk soon turned to the question of cannabis. Tyler Crafton, a student at Madison Central High School, asked Lynch whether she thought that recreational use of cannabis among high school kids would lead to opioid abuse.
“There a lot of discussion about marijuana these days,” Lynch responded. “Some states are making it legal, people are looking into medical uses for it, and I understand that it still is as common as almost anything. When we talk about heroin addiction, we usually, as we have mentioned, are talking about individuals that started out with a prescription drug problem, and then because they need more and more, they turn to heroin. It isn’t so much that marijuana is the step right before using prescription drugs or opioids.”
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28 comments:
Millions of us know for a fact that Marijuana is not a gateway drug.
The only "gateways" are the pharmaceuticals gateway to heroin.
The 2 products are made from the same plant.
That is the ONLY reason it would be a gateway - it is the same product virtually.
If I enjoy eating ice cream to excess, what are the odds that sooner or later I will excessively eat Doritos?
If I drink a LOT of bourbon, will I eventually drink a LOT of tequila?
Of course not.
People are just ignorant about these topics and so they fall for any old propaganda.
Well, they are FINALLY admitting what most knew for decades. It's a plant. It is medicine. It is harmless. It is a CURE for a lot of illnesses.
Therein lies the threat to drug companies and doctors and hospitals.
Of course it's a gateway drug...It's the beginning of a lifestyle.
1:07
Thank you.
The potheads are too stoned to realize how stupid they sound
12:40's bourbon and tequila analogy doesn't hold up. Marijuana isn't meth, coke, heroin or oxycontin. But trying to alter reality with some or all of these substances is the common thread. That is a fact.
1:07 is correct.
Please excuse 50 plus years of observing people make bad choices; that's my basis for sharing.
107pm you have data to support that ASSumption? Citizen all knowing!
Like booze ?
A lifestyle? Could you say a bit more?
And donuts and ice cream?
The potheads are too stoned to realize how stupid they sound
October 14, 2017 at 1:33 PM
So, the Atty. General is a pothead? Along with professors at colleges, various government officials, and most people with half a brain, some experience, even more, common sense, and those that can research, think for themselves and don't go around blindly parroting whatever they happen to hear? Or is that just YOU? Oh, and I forgot to mention the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Thanks for clearing all this up for us and setting the record straight. How in the world did all these potheads get such prestigious jobs I wonder.
The gateway theory has been debunked by countless government studies. Take your pick: the 1944 LaGuardia Commission report; the 1972 Shafer Commission report; the 1999 Institute of Medicine report. As researchers with the federal Institute of Medicine reported: “There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.”
Lynch’s statement itself wasn’t shocking. We’ve known since the 1940s that the gateway theory is a fairy tale. What’s surprising is that it took this long for a sitting U.S. attorney general to acknowledge that very basic and proven fact.
I wasn't aware we had such super intelligent people here on the shore. Man, what a secret resource we have here.
3:07 Truth!
If it wasn't illegal, it would not require coming into contact with drug dealers that are eager to sell any drug to make a profit.
"It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of heroin users have used marijuana (and many other drugs) not only long before they used heroin but while they are using heroin. Like nearly all people with substance abuse problems, most heroin users initiated their drug use early in their teens, usually beginning with alcohol and marijuana. There is ample evidence that early initiation of drug use primes the brain for enhanced later responses to other drugs. These facts underscore the need for effective prevention to reduce adolescent use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana in order to turn back the heroin and opioid epidemic and to reduce burdens addiction in this country.
Establishing it as a third legal drug, along with tobacco and alcohol, will increase drug abuse, including the expanding opioid epidemic.
Marijuana use is positively correlated with alcohol use and cigarette use, as well as illegal drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine. This does not mean that everyone who uses marijuana will transition to using heroin or other drugs, but it does mean that people who use marijuana also consume more, not less, legal and illegal drugs than do people who do not use marijuana.
People who are addicted to marijuana are three times more likely to be addicted to heroin."
Robert L. DuPont is the president of the Institute for Behavior and Health and the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
1:07 and 1:33: Just a rural volunteer fire fighter, a public school educator, and a family man. I invest in stocks and have been maxing out my IRA for years. Please explain my poor choices in my current life style? Your argument does not apply to me and definitely not all the time.
It's 7:00 on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in. Are you making love to your tonic and gin? I'm home making a Stracotto. I don't know how I ran onto the road that I'm running on. Damn weed.
Peace and I just hope you are not thinking you are the authority on everything. Your mind appears already made up, yet you really have no clue.
So you agree we should ban alcohol at once correct? It's a gateway drug, the most abused drug in the country and associated with more deaths then heroin a year.
"He was the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1973 to 1978 and was the second White House Drug Czar from 1973 to 1977 under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford."
Under Richard Nixon. Say no more. He threw the commission results in a drawer and refused to act on them, instead waging a war on cannabis that cost us trillions of dollars and has never, ever been successful in any way.
5:04 NIDA is a government agency that pushes the federal gov't. agenda of suppressing medicinal Pot and CBD.
Some among us may take note that Loretta Lynch was the Attorney General for a period of time. She succeeded Eric Holder. Both were appointed by the former? head of The Choom Gang, who eventually started using coke. So do you think she'd speak contrary to his wishes and actions? She is no longer employed in that capacity.
The Opinion Pages
Robert L. DuPont is the president of the Institute for Behavior and Health and the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
UPDATED APRIL 26, 2016, 3:22 AM
October 14, 2017 at 5:04 PM
Good try. Most people probably would not have caught what you were trying to do, especially if they had to do any work like reading and research what you were trying to pass off. He WAS the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. (1973-1978) The same institute that contradicts his OPINION piece that you copied and pasted. Robert L. DuPont (born March 25, 1936 in Toledo, Ohio) is a national leader in marijuana policy, drug policy and treatment. He was the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) from 1973 to 1978 and was the second White House Drug Czar from 1973 to 1977 under former Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In 1978 Dr. DuPont became the founding President of the Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc.[1] In 1982 he and Peter B. Bensinger founded Bensinger, DuPont & Associates,[2] a national consulting firm. Dr. DuPont is a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine[3] and a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He was the founding president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA) and currently maintains a psychiatric practice in Maryland specializing in addiction and anxiety disorders.[4]
Like I said, good try. But I wouldn't put too much stock in what he says since he was making money off of what he said was so EVIL. lol
His claims that marijuana is "the most dangerous drug",[11] may at first seem at odds with current scientific consensus,[12] however the emphasis of that claim pertains only to those drugs that are illegal under federal law. Alcohol is not an illegal drug, is only illegal to sell or provide alcohol to a minor. Dr. DuPont is a strong proponent of the prevention of addiction to alcohol and other drugs before it starts.[7][9]
In 1981 he served as a paid consultant for Straight, Incorporated, one of the few drug treatment programs at that time that enrolled adolescents. While viewed by some as a "controversial non-profit drug rehabilitation program" which was the subject of numerous allegations of abuse and which was successfully sued for false imprisonment and maltreatment,[13] the program was viewed favorably by many notables such as Nancy Reagan and Princess Diana.
These findings are consistent with the idea of marijuana as a "gateway drug." However, the majority of people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, "harder" substances. Also, cross-sensitization is not unique to marijuana. Alcohol and nicotine also prime the brain for a heightened response to other drugs52 and are, like marijuana, also typically used before a person progresses to other, more harmful substances.
It is important to note that other factors besides biological mechanisms, such as a person’s social environment, are also critical in a person’s risk for drug use. An alternative to the gateway-drug hypothesis is that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying other drugs. Further research is needed to explore this question.
This page was last updated August 2017
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-gateway-drug
October 14, 2017 at 7:58 PM
Good job. I see I'm not the only one who caught that and actually put some effort into it. Kudos.
Refermadness
I remember back in the day when cocaine really hit the scene: the people that sold pot started carrying it, as so many thought it was just great stuff. You gotta try this, it's great! Then friends of friends started trying it, and as many know, most can't walk away from it. I watched helplessly as friends became cocaine fiends, some went on to freebasing, lots went on to jail for stealing for their habit, some lost their lives. I never went further than pot, yet people largely uneducated on the subject insist that pot's a gateway drug. It's mainly the social interactions that I saw firsthand as being the cause of going on to hard drugs.
Loretta? Is that what she and Bill were talking about on the Tarmac? Maybe they were just catching a buzz together.
October 14, 2017 at 7:58 PM again. I neglected to mention the incredible amount of human suffering at the hands of a misguided and overzealous government and its agencies for crimes against no one.
12:51 am Show of hands of anyone with a car or house broken into by a drug user/abuser? Happened in my neighborhood a while back as a druggie went through cars for items to steal and sell.
As one poster noted, not all potheads advance to other drugs, but almost all users of more dangerous drugs got a start with weed.
And when drug users are arrested it is now very common to find an array of drugs in their possession. Alcohol may also be part of the substances being abused.
Then move. Mexico? Sweden?
people who STAY with harder drugs than pot are predisposed to do so because of their biology. Some get addicted, others do not. I don't think anyone has ever gotten addicted to pot, have they? For whatever reason, they first tried harder drugs they probably would have if they tried pot first or not.
Depending on the strain, pot can make one laid back or more energized. But I digress. Pot in and of itself is not dangerous. It doesn't lead to harder drugs. It has proven medical benefits. Pot was stigmatized by the gov't and foolish health workers decades ago, probably by the insistence of the fed gov't.
Some Q-tips in gov't and health care still hold onto these fallacies. But thankfully, the winds they are a-changing.
Just something to think about. There are lots of pot smokers who never move on to harder drugs, right? Because it's just smoking a little bit of weed... you feel good, aren't violent, eat some doritos, and chill.
Of course if you are going to do harder drugs like heroin, smoking some reefer is a lay up.
The "gateway" argument is an illusion, a distraction.
The argument really should be if the government has a right to dictate what we can do with our bodies. Do I have dominion over my body, or does that government?
Arguably, most crime from drug use comes from the fact it is illegal. Legalize, reduce crime.
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