Possession of pot will lead to a lower domestic violence rate! It's all so simple!

[tarr]

I saw this in the Rocky Mountain News, and have to say I'm pretty disgusted:

Pot backers won't halt domestic violence ads

Comments

[dysgr8mystake]

What's interesting is that the data doesn't show causality at all. Like, studies and everything show no real causality, simply that things like that happen.

However (and I'm not using this for evidence of anything, just throwing it out there), there is a woman in my health class, she's about 42 or so, who believes wholeheartedly in the gateway drug theory, because she believes it happened to her. She started smoking pot, did a whole lot of that, and believes that pot made her decide to take the other, harder drugs, in the sense that "If I've done pot, I can't just not do other stuff." Try to tell her the gateway drug theory doesn't work. She gets all bristly. That, and my area of Illinois had some pretty massive meth problems (there were four labs in my area that I knew of, and I'm fairly oblivious to drugs; one across the street, we think, from where I live), and everyone I know who really got into the meth was into pot first.

NOW. Give me a second. That doesn't show causality in every case... but I think it makes the case that for some people, it does lead to other things, but not for every single person who smokes pot. I also know people who've never done anything else, just smoke pot on a sunday afternoon after work, all that. But compared to those who've moved ont o harder and more dangerous things, it's a tiny percentage.

[dysgr8mystake]

Fantastic reply.

I always figured they focused on pot so much because it is the illegal drug easiest to obtain. They can't focus on alcohol because the alcohol companies are huge, because the gov't won't focus on alcohol anymore. Sure, Prohibition didn't work, but it's always nice to give kids some real education on the subject, allow them to make informed decisions about which stimulant/depressant/etc they want in their body.

Then again, given educated choices, the kids would probably head right for pot.

I agree with your point about alcohol abuse. There are so many kids here (I go to Southern Illinois University-Carbondale) who are commiting alcohol abuse, and would never admit it, really never even realize it.

[morgan_dhu]

I also know people who've never done anything else, just smoke pot on a sunday afternoon after work, all that. But compared to those who've moved ont o harder and more dangerous things, it's a tiny percentage.

Do you have hard data for this? Something that shows that the total percentage of people who have used pot and then moved on to become habitual users of stronger drugs is much greater than the total percentage of people who have used pot and have not become habitual users of harder drugs?

Because, while my experience is certainly anecdotal, among my own acquaintences, the number of people who just smoke pot is much greater than the number who have become habitual users of harder drugs. It is true that some of the pot-smokers I know, including myself, tried harder drugs once or twice, but did not become habitual users. For instance, I tried cocaine several times. That was almost 30 years ago, and I've never used it since. I still use pot occasionally.

Now, depending on how you frame your questions and assign your categories of research subjects, you could put me into a group of people for whom pot was a gateway drug, because I have tried several other drugs that are harder than pot. But by any functional definition, I am not and have never been a habitual user of any drugs other than pot (and, of course, the nice legal ones like caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and chocolate), so if you did do that, you'd be distorting your statistics.

Can you point me to studies that indicate that the number of pot smokers who remain just pot smokers is a tiny percentage compared to the number who have smoked pot and gone on to use harder and more dangerous drug on a habitual basis?

[dysgr8mystake]

I was making no case for this to be an overall thing. It's a purely anecdotal note, and something that may hold true only for the specific group of people I know, it may hold true only for my area of my state, or it may not hold true at all when tested.

It's only something I've noticed. Habitual to me seems to be used as a synonym for "heavy", and I'm not stating that the people who seem to be moving onto harder drugs are heavy users. It's simply that I've noticed that a much higher percentage of this little anecdotal group become regular users of harder drugs along with pot. Perhaps they're only doing ecstasy every other week, but it's become a regular thing, and that's what I was noting.

Another interesting ancedotal thing is that percentage of pot smokers who drink regularly; it's a lot smaller in my group than those who use what I consider "harder" drugs.

[savestheworld]

"What's interesting is that the data doesn't show causality at all. Like, studies and everything show no real causality, simply that things like that happen."
100% of crack users started with air
make air illegal! hahah