^^^^great post^^^^^^


"Go ahead, share your opinion! I won't cry"

For those who need an assist with the math, marijuana use predicts a 250% increase in later opioid abuse (compared with abstaining).

Alcohol and cigarettes predicts use predicts a 25% increase in later opioid abuse for young men and no increase in later opioid use in young women.

Lol.... Cool story


"Go ahead, share your opinion! I won't cry"

That 25% could be purely attributed to guys being guys are trying things and not being scared.
You see how these " theories " work.
You can spin however you want. If you think there is some compound in cannabis that makes you do heroin then you are a complete and utter moron. Stick to counting things and stop trying to influence people opinions on social issues.
Answer this
Why is there such a disparity between monthly cannabis smokers and monthly opiate users ???
With a 250% increase in latter opiate use why aren't the numbers the same or even close ?
Let me help you with that answer.
If you need help with the math this means the gateway theory is 100% crap.



Spiral Out

Here is the whole finding of the study that W posted the article about. So math geek do we ban beer ? Why do we force people by law to take a more harmful intoxicant it's not even up for debate how much worse alcohol is and we trust adults to make the right choices with that. Why not with weed.

A Yale study published Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that people who used alcohol or tobacco in their youth are almost twice as likely to abuse prescription opiate drugs than those who only used marijuana.

Researchers were careful to specify that any youth substance abuse, including just marijuana use, makes people more than twice as likely to abuse prescription opiate drugs in young adulthood. However, the study’s authors noted that clinical data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that of the 12 percent of young adults who said they’d abused prescription opiates, “prevalence of previous substance use was 57% for alcohol, 56% for cigarettes, and 34% for marijuana.”

The Centers for Disease Control said in January that prescription opiate overdoses kill more Americans every year than cocaine and heroin overdoses combined.


Interestingly, the Yale study also found a bit of a gender skew that may indicate boys are naturally more inclined than girls to engage in risk-taking behaviors. “We found that among young boys, all previous substance use (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana), but only previous marijuana use in young girls, was associated with an increased likelihood of subsequent abuse of prescription opioids during young adulthood,” researchers wrote.

The findings seem to confirm a study published last month in The Journal of School Health, which fleshed out several misconceptions about the so-called “gateway drug” theory and pinpointed alcohol, instead of marijuana, as the most commonly abused substance for first-time drug users.

Researchers used the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey to prove that marijuana use is not the primary indicator of whether an individual will abuse other more dangerous substances. In doing so, the School Health study proved that there is data which correlates to a so-called “gateway effect,” showing that the largest gateway is actually alcohol.

“If you take [our findings] and apply them to a school health setting, we believe that you are going to get the best bang for your buck by focusing on alcohol,” study co-author Adam E. Barry told Raw Story. Public health officials have been making similar efforts with tobacco, saying they’re encouraged by the success of educational ad campaigns that show the true health effects experienced by many life-long smokers.

Yale researchers reached a similar conclusion, saying: “Prevention efforts targeting early substance abuse may help to curb the abuse of prescription opioids.”

A study published in 2010 in the medical journal Lancet ranked alcohol as the most harmful drug known to man, with more than double the potential harms of heroin use.



Spiral Out

The Institute of Medicine study characterized marijuana’s role as a “gateway drug” as follows:

"Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana—usually before they are of legal age.



Spiral Out