(29-07-12) Alcohol - not marijuana - is the gateway drug, study shows

by J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) For years Americans have been told that marijuana should remain
illegal because it is the ultimate "gateway" drug - that is, the drug that most
often leads to the abuse of other, more potent drugs.

Not so, according to a new study which says alcohol - not marijuana - is the
true gateway drug.

Of three drugs or drug-containing substances - alcohol, tobacco and marijuana
- the study found that the former, not the latter, led to more drug use.

In examining a nationally representative sample obtained from the University
of Michigan's Monitoring the Future survey, the study concluded: "Results from
the Guttman scale indicated that alcohol represented the 'gateway' drug,
leading to the use of tobacco, marijuana, and other illicit substances.
Moreover, students who used alcohol exhibited a significantly greater
likelihood of using both licit and illicit drugs."

That said, the study concluded "that alcohol should receive primary attention
in school-based substance abuse prevention programming, as the use of other
substances could be impacted by delaying or preventing alcohol use.

"Therefore, it seems prudent for school and public health officials to focus
prevention efforts, policies, and monies, on addressing adolescent alcohol
use," said the study.

Earlier studies point to similar results.

Longstanding tie between alcohol consumption and drug abuse

As early as 1985, for example, a study published in the Journal of Youth and
Adolescence concluded "that students do not use illicit drugs unless they also
use alcohol."

"Since alcohol serves as the gateway to all other drug use, prevention
approaches that control and limit alcohol use among adolescents may be
warranted," authors John W. Welte and Grace M. Barnes, both of New York State
University at Buffalo, wrote.

A Missouri Western State University study conducted in 2009 found that a
majority of subjects examined - 67 percent - went on to smoke marijuana after
they had already begun consuming alcohol, not the other way around.

"We found that for our study, the more alcohol someone drinks the more likely
they will be to want to smoke marijuana," wrote the study's authors.

"Marijuana is called the gateway drug. It is considered the worst drug
available because is supposedly causes its users to move on to harder drugs.
What people don't realize is that marijuana use comes after someone is already
using alcohol and tobacco," they wrote.

In 2010 British Prof. David Nutt, the one-time chief drugs adviser to the
government, co-authored a report that said alcohol use and abuse in England was
more harmful than crack or heroin, when the overall damage they all cause to
society are measured.

"Overall, alcohol was the most harmful drug (overall harm score 72), with
heroin (55) and crack cocaine (54) in second and third places," the report,
which was published in the journal Lancet, concluded.

Denying the obvious

"Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands,
confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to
the evidence of harm," said the report. "They also accord with the conclusions
of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid
and necessary public health strategy."

When released, the authors' findings ran afoul of the government's long-
standing drug classification system, which have claimed for years that other
drugs are more potent.

"Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used," Nutt
told the BBC following publication of his findings.

"Crack cocaine is more addictive than alcohol but because alcohol is so widely
used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and
those people will go to extraordinary lengths to get it," he said.

Predictably, like its American counterpart likely would, the British
government balked at Nutt's report.

"Our priorities are clear - we want to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-
related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good," a
spokesman from the Home Office sniffed.

The alcohol lobby obviously has deeper pockets.

Sources:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com

http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/481.php

http://www.springerlink.com/content/fgn1j1w6158xt202/

www.thelancet.com

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