marijuana gateway drug

Certainly, when many addicts recount their life stories, drug use, specifically marijuana is the first stop on a long road of abuse. There is a false correlation when we compare marijuana usage with other types of drugs.

Marijuana drug usage

1. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has released a statistic that says a person who has smoked marijuana is 104 times more likely to have snorted cocaine than a non-marijuana smoker.

2. On the point of balance, correlation isn’t the cause. Outlaw motorcycle gang members are probably more than 104 times more likely to have ridden a bicycle as a kid than those who didn’t become outlaw bikers. What this means is that riding a two-wheeler isn’t a gateway into the outlaw biker world – it says that most people ride bikes and those who don’t aren’t highly likely to ever ride a motorcycle.

3. If marijuana is truly a gateway drug, the use of hard drugs would exponentially higher by comparison to the use of marijuana. In 2009, the federal government released statistics that said 2.3M people admitted to trying marijuana, while 617,000 said they have tried cocaine and 180,000 tried heroin.

Many drug users freely admit that they tried marijuana before trying anything harder, but the reality is that smoking and drinking were early precursors of their life before they tried marijuana. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences concluded in its 1999 report that early exposure to nicotine and alcohol posed a greater threat and “there is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.” If you or a loved one are in need of drug rehab treatment, please contact us today.

What is the link between marijuana and other drugs?

  • Many times it comes down to individual tastes and generally when a person is attempting to alter his or her consciousness they will use a number of different substances to achieve those ends. Look at it like this, if you are a music fan, you will listen to many types of different music without confining yourself to one specific band.
  • If you can’t score a dime bag of weed, you are highly unlikely to find a heroin dealer. Weed dealers are generally more welcoming than hard drug dealers due to the consequences surrounding hard drug sales and the penalties associated with dealing hard drugs. If you are a regular customer for a weed dealer, they will introduce you to hard drugs should you express an interest, but by and large, they stick with what works, which is marijuana.

For the law enforcement community, the science that has dispelled the myth that marijuana is a gateway drug is unsettling. But the science in this instance is settled, and marijuana poses little or no threat to escalated hard drug use on its own. Still, it’s important to pay attention anytime usage moves into more illicit substances. Give us a call today at 866-349-1770 if you or a loved one needs an expert rehab.