Pot As 'Gateway' Drug & Other Fictions

Not a month goes by without a new study on the evils or benefits – or beneficial evils – of marijuana.

USA Today has entered the fray with an interesting story on how millions of baby boomers smoked pot in their youth and quit with little effort, while their kids are having a tougher time kicking the reefer habit.

The story states that:

"[S]tudies have shown that when regular pot smokers quit, they do experience withdrawal symptoms, a characteristic used to predict addictiveness. Most users of more addictive drugs, such as cocaine or heroin, started with marijuana, scientists say, and the earlier they started, the greater their risk of becoming addicted."

That is difficult to disagree with until you consider that millions of people of all ages – okay, teenagers on up – smoke marijuana, but there are not millions of hard-drug addicts.

How to explain this?

USA Today rides to the rescue in one of the more astute observations about marijuana that I have read in a long time:

"Many studies have documented a link between smoking marijuana and the later use of 'harder' drugs such as heroin and cocaine, but that doesn't necessarily mean marijuana causes addiction to harder drugs.

" . . . That's because it's impossible to separate marijuana from the environment in which it is smoked . . . "

I had a "No Sh*t!" moment when I read this explanation, which is why those millions of Americans are happily puffing away without being led to great temptation. So simple and so obivous that it defies contradiction. (Not to suggest that people won't try. Now that the Rev. Ted Haggard is a heterosexual again, he'll probably give it a shot.)

More here.