[Khar]

I think there is, to be honest, but I'm also not a very ardent follower of this topic either, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm behind the times. I'd rather Canada jump in with eyes as wide as possible before than potentially having wide eyes of shock afterwards.

As we see above, four recent papers in three different fields, and an editorial, suggest the same sort of response about the gateway effect. However, we also have to keep in mind that the gateway effect is one of many biological factors involved in marajuana research. Since it was brought up (I forgot if it was a pro or a con point of view) I felt I needed to point out that the gateway effect is neither supported or refuted by modern research, but rather papers postulate a series of alternatives to the gateway effect which could explain the relationship attributed in some studies between cocaine and marajuana users (such as the paper which looked directly at heavy drug users above). As it stands, however, bringing up the gateway effect as a significant argument point doesn't make sense to me, given the current status of that.

The problem with modern policy more has to do with the economic position of marajuana and whether or not marajuana use impacts alcohol use in the papers above. If legalizing marajuana leads to a greater degree of alcohol abuse, society would then have to pay for the problems thereof. The bottom is an excerpt of the JSTOR article at the very end where they discuss potential further research on the topic.

Even conditional on the generalizability of the estimate obtained here, policy im- plications depend crucially on the contemporaneous relationship between marijuana and alcohol use. If these drugs are indeed complements, as indicated here and in Saffer and Chaloupka [1996], then policy should clearly aim to restrict youth mari- juana use. On the other hand, if these drugs are in fact substitutes, as several previ- ously cited studies have found, then restrictive marijuana policy involves a tradeoff between reducing future cocaine demand and increasing current alcohol demand. The latter is problematic because alcohol intoxication most likely involves greater health, accident and crime risks than marijuana intoxication. Similarly, policy impli- cations depend on the nature of the unobserved factors found here to be responsible for the inconsistency in the OLS estimates, since they reflect a component of the contemporaneous relationship between marijuana and cocaine. Namely, does the negative correlation between unobservables affecting marijuana and cocaine imply that restrictive marijuana policy would push teenagers and young adults to substi- tute cocaine for marijuana at an earlier age rather than simply block the gateway to cocaine use?

To further clarify policy goals, future research should attempt to identify the fun- damental relationships underlying the gateway from marijuana to cocaine. In par- ticular, empirical analysis should seek to establish the relative importance of mari- juana addiction, the contemporaneous relationship between marijuana and cocaine, and the direct intertemporal effect that exists because both drugs produce euphoria. For instance, Pacula [1997] reports evidence of both addictive marijuana and strong contemporaneous complementarity between alcohol and marijuana, but fails to find a separate direct gateway from alcohol to marijuana. Comparable information for the gateway from marijuana to cocaine can delineate the role that reducing the persis- tence over time of marijuana use must play in the effort to avert the progression from marijuana to cocaine use.

[Zipperfish]

Khar Khar:

I think there is, to be honest, but I'm also not a very ardent follower of this topic either, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm behind the times. I'd rather Canada jump in with eyes as wide as possible before than potentially having wide eyes of shock afterwards.

As we see above, four recent papers in three different fields, and an editorial, suggest the same sort of response about the gateway effect. However, we also have to keep in mind that the gateway effect is one of many biological factors involved in marajuana research. Since it was brought up (I forgot if it was a pro or a con point of view) I felt I needed to point out that the gateway effect is neither supported or refuted by modern research, but rather papers postulate a series of alternatives to the gateway effect which could explain the relationship attributed in some studies between cocaine and marajuana users (such as the paper which looked directly at heavy drug users above). As it stands, however, bringing up the gateway effect as a significant argument point doesn't make sense to me, given the current status of that.

I would argue that differing conclusions from recent studies don't mean that more research is needed prior to making a policy decision. We could study the drug intently at the expense of all other research for the next hundred years and we would still be getting studies with differing conclusions.

It's a bit like the Inquisition of medieval Europe--either the suspect was a witch or the poor thing died on the torture table. No other outcome was possible. But today insetad of asking "Are you a witch?" we ask "Is there a risk?"

$1:

The problem with modern policy more has to do with the economic position of marajuana and whether or not marajuana use impacts alcohol use in the papers above. If legalizing marajuana leads to a greater degree of alcohol abuse, society would then have to pay for the problems thereof. The bottom is an excerpt of the JSTOR article at the very end where they discuss potential further research on the topic.

Those who oppose marijuana use need to socialize the risk. After all, if in a free country, folks should be able to partake of risky behaviour if they are only risking themselves, right? But if you can socialize it--make it everyone's problem--then you can really exert control.

Again, the witch analogy is instructive. Prior to Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches, 1486), being a witch was essentially a private risk--"Well, if she wants to risk her immortal soul seeking herbal remedies insetad of praying, then she's the one who'll burn." They risked excommmunication. But the publication of Malleus Maleficarum and its subsequent endorsement by Pope Innocent VIII, socialized the risk. All those crop failures and plague outbreaks were not natural--they were caused by witches. Collective action by a central authority was thus justified.

Does marijuana use have some negative social consequences?--you bet it does. But really it's a moot question since there is nothing that, if studied enough, does not have negative social consequence. The ironic part is that the negative social consequence seems to be more correlated with the sheer quantity research conducted on the topic than it dos to any absolute measure of risk. The more research you do, the worse it gets (again, similar to the witchcraft analogy; as soon as the Inquisition started, it turned out that there were witches everywhere!).

[Gunnair]

billypilgrim billypilgrim:

Gunnair Gunnair:

The real piss off won't be the fucktards who want to militarize the US border because Canada legalizes pot, but all them poor Yanks who want to come up north for a fine merlot, a Nanaimo bar, and a joint that'll be stuck in their 19th century society south of the 49th.

No loss not being able to go south.

well said. ..i've noticed a recent increase in your use of the word 'fucktard', and i like it.

There seems to be more of them about... present company excluded of course.

[Curtman]

Khar Khar:

I wanted to copy and paste some conclusions here but it occurred to me I should check before doing so to see if I was actually allowed to.

‘lo and behold, I can’t due to policy from JSTOR (since I did not notice my automatic access) and other online access mediums.

Two papers which I can reference in some degree come to the conclusions that they can neither support nor refute the gateway hypothesis to a significant degree. Extensive rhetoric from advocacy groups and special-interest lobbyists aside, general evidence on the topic is inconclusive.

Other papers or editorials peripherally discuss other issues as well. Full access to the first two articles provides some good summaries on topics such as policy. Essentially, the responses come from several methods of discussing this -- biological, economical and psychological. How this relates to policy decisions is mentioned in several. For example, the discussion of alcohol as a substitute or complement good greatly effects policy decisions. If people who do weed typically do it hand in hand with alcohol, then there are tangible benefits to reducing weed consumption to reduce to deleterious effects of assosiated alcohol use. However, this requires further research which, as far as I know, has not been completed. The excerpts, abstracts and descriptions are worth reading since they will say a lot about why the gateway effect cannot be confirmed, as well as touching on some major debate issues which rage to this day.

If you guys can't access one of the pages, let me know, I am pretty sure those pages are all public access though.

I haven't read your links yet. (I will though) Do any of them indicate that some chemical in the marijuana causes users to search out cocaine and heroin? It seems logical to me that the causality would work in reverse. People who are somewhat inclined to try cocaine/heroin would be much more likely to try a less harmful drug first. If the same people who sell marijuana are also selling cocain and heroin, it would also seem to me that the unregulated market might be the problem instead of the drug itself.

[Choban]

The gateway argument is simply that the majority of hard drug users used pot first, well here's an argument, the majority of pot smokers smoked tobacco first, then those that went on to harder things tried pot first, does that make tobacco a gateway drug? if yes why is it legal.
Personally As i've argued before on this forum, I don't buy the gateway drug arguments, they are shallow and unfounded with no real merit as the majority of pot users use just pot.

[Khar]

@ Zipperfish: I don't know. If we look at recent work in other fields, we see it disputes past claims. Ideas develop, new issues come forward, policy changes, theories shift. I think that there's likely going to be a similar move in marijuana. We have already seen that as time moves on the health reports of marijuana have become more positive in their conclusions, it's not too hard to find papers on that. We can also see that direct societal problems within the context of North America are not as bad as were originally believed.

These shifts represented positive changes due to a change in what had been long running research. With the introduction of new paradigms or methods or knowledge, we are able to advance the theory. If we have new research and it's trending in a general direction across several fields, I think it's worth keeping in mind.

On top of that, these papers discussing the relationship between alcohol and marijuana are actually looking at it from an economic point of view, not a biological one, and at the time (a period of about ten years is represented there, I think) the topic appeared and developed to what I provided here. The debate over whether alcohol is a substitute good, meaning you interchange one or the other, or a complementary good, meaning that the use of one typical increases the other, is important. The applications of this to policy may range from focusing on how to reduce the complementary good effect, which has actually been a move in Canada with PSAs -- no doubt you saw those commercials recommending you don't smoke weed and drink. Because of these papers, we were able to effect positive policy changes to make people aware of the risks, and reduce them as complementary good. When I say we need to move in good terms with policy, I mean that we may need to have the provincial government of BC educate people not to do both at the same time, or step up campaigns involving government-public alcohol education. If we have to focus on this to make sure that legalization does not have have a negative effect via alcohol, that's important to me and worth keeping in mind.

I would rather we know and begin working towards effective policy changes like those PSAs first and then move forward with legalization. Being able to smoothly transition into a large societal change is important. We can see other similar situations like prohibition almost 100 years ago to see what can happen when we change the legal status of something from some level of illegality to another status. I don't have a vested interest in this area though, so I likely don't have the same sense of progression most people have, especially folks like yourself who would prefer the government take more expedient steps to get out of the way of people.

@ Curtman: No definitive (or statistically significant) biological evidence was found which was lead to the conclusion of a "gateway" in either the more general paper or the one looking at heavy users. Rather, the articles came up with a set of varying theories which they suspect might explain why in some cases what could be viewed as a gateway effect could be seen, even though it may not actually be a gateway effect.

This is why it's very hard to bring in the gateway effect now in debates, no matter which way it is brought up, since the evidence is not actually definitive in any way. Indeed, the economic paper discussing alcohol and marijuana also disputed the gateway effect, which, as I mentioned to Zipperfish, was prominent over the years. I also believe another, like the economic paper, disputed it from a statistical point of view, and a third points out potential problems with information which might have lead to false positives in some older papers which lead to the conclusion that marijuana was a gateway drug. Personally, I think yourself and Zipperfish likely view these developments as positive movements in research over the years.

I think that the conclusions of the article I grabbed the "further research" section from did discuss something related to the market topic you brought up, if I remembered correctly. It's the second link. If you can't get access to it from that link, drop me a PM and I'll see if I can find an open alternative for you. There's also some other articles about the drug market, I can see if I can dig those up for you if you're interested? I honestly don't remember if they were in the context of Canada though, I mostly just know I've come across them because of the title of the articles.

@ Choban: The way I was taught is that gateway drugs supposedly increased the likelihood of going on to another drug. At the time, there was some statistical evidence which supported this, but as the papers above explore peripherally, the gateway effect may be overstated or may be coming from something else. Curtman, for example, brought up the topic of markets. While I'm not sure about the details on that, I do know that one of the articles discusses consumption curves (I believe) as a possible means by which the gateway effect was wrong.

So yeah, basically just agreeing with you. I know one of my little cousins got told the same thing as you, I think it depends from province to province how that one is taught or some such in school. Honestly, until I read those articles a few years back I thought marijuana users had a higher predisposition towards harder drugs as a result of marijuana because of how I was taught way back when.

[Public_Domain]

As a personal case, as I started smoking more and more, I completely stopped drinking alcohol.
I've pretty much sworn it off for several reasons, moral and basically because it
lost in competition by comparison when I actually thought about it.
That said I don't know of others' stance if there had to decide between the two,
or if they'd be willing to drop one in favour of the other at all.
Something makes me figure drinking rates would fall, but I have no evidence of that.

[Zipperfish]

Khar Khar:

@ Zipperfish: I don't know. If we look at recent work in other fields, we see it disputes past claims. Ideas develop, new issues come forward, policy changes, theories shift. I think that there's likely going to be a similar move in marijuana. We have already seen that as time moves on the health reports of marijuana have become more positive in their conclusions, it's not too hard to find papers on that. We can also see that direct societal problems within the context of North America are not as bad as were originally believed.

The cultural debate over marijuana is kind of pendulous--societal mores become more conservatvie and then more liberal. In theory, the science should advance regardless of the cultural norms of the time, but in practice, this doesn't happen. The science tends to support the cultural mindset of the time--eugenics, is a good example. It had a lot of scientific support at the time, but when the cultural pendulum shiftyed away from the idea of racial superiority, it kind of died.

With respect to the science of marijuana use, I don't believe that the science has become more "positive" over time. I think you'll see that conclusions reflect social morals of the time. The British commission report of 1894 didn't see much harm in pot, but I can think of one recent study (UN report I think) where the harm of pot was put on par with that of heroin.

Also keep in mind that probably greater than 50% of the population of Canada has direct experience with marijuana. They've tried it themselves and have formed opinions on it, and those opinions will probably override findings by a bunch of eggheads, whether based on economics or biology. And that's fair in my opinion. We're not supposed to be an society where elites make decisions, but where people make decisions.

So, to reiterate, I don't see more study informing the debate much at this point. We don't know everyhting about pot, but we know enough.

$1:

These shifts represented positive changes due to a change in what had been long running research. With the introduction of new paradigms or methods or knowledge, we are able to advance the theory. If we have new research and it's trending in a general direction across several fields, I think it's worth keeping in mind.

Exactly my point--new paradigms and new ways of thinking influence so-called scientific outcomes. A good example is the inflation of the definition of "addiction" to include marijuana. It wasn't that pot suddenly became addictive, it's that they inflated the definition of addiction to include pot (and chocolate and overeating and gambling, etc). So pot became addictive, though, if you read the small print, you realize that this wasn't based on much in the way of new research at all, but rather on semantics.

$1:

I would rather we know and begin working towards effective policy changes like those PSAs first and then move forward with legalization. Being able to smoothly transition into a large societal change is important. We can see other similar situations like prohibition almost 100 years ago to see what can happen when we change the legal status of something from some level of illegality to another status. I don't have a vested interest in this area though, so I likely don't have the same sense of progression most people have, especially folks like yourself who would prefer the government take more expedient steps to get out of the way of people.

Yes in general I find the government, like any organization (or organism for that matter) likes to grow. One of the ways government can do that is by socializing risk (thus justifying a central authority to assume control), and I find that they do too much of it these days--from the evils of pot to the WMD threat of of Iraq. That's my personal opinion, not widely held, but I think supportable.

[Khar]

You know a lot more than me about the history of discussion on this, thanks for the information and the viewpoint, and thanks for taking the time to give me the down-low! I usually figure when stuff modulates like that it's usually some theory coming in, then the kinks being worked out. It's kind of that way for telomerase research (when those scientists got the Nobel Prize, there was a lot of "what? Really?" in the labs here, haha!). Still, pot is definitely a very polarized and politicized topic so me reverting to that response was really naive, and it was definitely a failure on my part to not account for that.

Personally, I cringe when people use anything from the UN these days, since I find that the UN is filled with activists and advocacy groups who go in with a set opinion they plan to prove for their own betterment of the world. I have to admit that it's ex-UN employees who have helped make me that bitter, so I can definitely get where you are coming from with pot use.

For the record, the research I'm most interested in (and which I've given more emphasis here to) right now is the stuff about potential social/economic risks. Most of the biology I dragged in for the purpose of talking about the gateway effect briefly, since if I did it with an economics paper people might have given their computer screens what I would imagine to be funny looks. Those topics mentioned, at least, have remained relatively unchanged (possibly because the research topics themselves are relatively young, too).

[romanP]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

romanP romanP:

[Wow, is marijuana that dangerous?

Danger has nothing to do with it. It's a sin.

Oh, right.. of course. As if THAT explains the zombie rash!

[scarecrowe]

I don't care if you;
- smoke
- smoke pot
- get drunk
- get cirrhosis of the liver
- lung cancer from smoking

Just don't do anything to anyone else such as run them down in a car when you are intoxicated or ask for a bailout when you screw up your health or in other words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhlWddAXSRA

[jason700]

I think the 'gateway effect' is more of a social problem than a biological one. Use of harder drugs comes from peer pressure just like anything else.

If marijuana was legal and regulated, it would likely alleviate the problem a bit, IMO. You wouldn't have to be buy weed from the same person who also sells E, acid, opiates, etc.

[GreenTiger]

Just tell the government it would be something new they can tax.

If your governemnt is anything like out government they would
move to approve it like a positixe Ion.

[ASLplease]

jason700 jason700:

If marijuana was legal and regulated, it would likely alleviate the problem a bit, IMO. You wouldn't have to be buy weed from the same person who also sells E, acid, opiates, etc.

No one is forcing you to buy it from that guy, now.