Science Saturday III: Gateway? What Gateway?

The wingnuts who still believe that marijuana is a gateway to hard drugs are at it again, this time claiming that there is a direct link between smoking pot and getting hooked on heroin.

The latest entrant is the gateway sweepstakes is Yasmin Hurd of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who released a study showing that rats exposed to THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the main ingredient in marijuana, during their adolescence showed a greater sensitivity to heroin as adults.

Not so fast there, Reefer Breath.

First, Hurd's research flies in the face of the fact that the federal government, no friend of marijuana under any circumstance, estimates that there are 97 million Americans who have smoked pot compared to fewer than 3 million who have tried heroin. Not much of a gateway, eh?

Second, the study itself found no evidence that the rats in the main research group were more likely to become addicted than the rats in the control group who'd never been exposed to THC. Again, no gateway.

Slate has more here.