Jane Kelley wrote in a message to Alex Vasauskas:
 JK> ...kids who
 JK> start out with pot and alcohol end up in mental units for treatent
 JK> of cocaine and ampetamine problems at the tender age of 20-22 in
 JK> many cases. 
This is not a rational argument for precluding research into the
medical benefits of marijuana.
Moreover, this contains two misleading implications:  the idea that
anyone is advocating the recreational use of marijuana or any other
drug for children, and the myth that marijuana use causes people to want
other drugs more than if they had not tried marijuana.  Neither of these
is correct.  In the case of use by children, NORML, for example,
advocates that children *not* use or be encouraged or permitted to use
marijuana.  As for the purported "gateway" effect, the valid, credible
evidence is that there is none:
[Excerpt from NORML's Principles of Responsible Cannabis Use]:
When marijuana is enjoyed responsibly, subjecting users to harsh
criminal and civil penalties provides no public benefit and causes
terrible injustices.  For reasons of public safety, public health,
economics and justice, the prohibition laws should be repealed to
the extent that they criminalize responsible marijuana use. 
By adoption of this statement, the NORML Board of Directors has
attempted to define "responsible cannabis use."
I. ADULTS ONLY
Cannabis consumption is for adults only. It is irresponsible to 
provide cannabis to children.
Many things and activities are suitable for young people, but others
absolutely are not. Children do not drive cars, enter into contracts,
or marry, and they must not use drugs. As it is unrealistic to demand
lifetime abstinence from cars, contracts and marriage, however, it is
unrealistic to expect lifetime abstinence from all intoxicants,
including alcohol. Rather, our expectation and hope for young people
is that they grow up to be responsible adults. Our obligation to them
is to demonstrate what that means.
*     *     *
Adopted by the NORML Board of Directors
February 3, 1996
Washington, DC
copyright 1996 NORML
http://www.natlnorml.org NORML Home Page
comments: norml@natlnorml.org
[END NORML policy statement]
====
                         MARIJUANA MYTHS
Marijuana is a "gateway" drug -- it leads to hard drugs
     This is one of the more persistent myths.  A real world
example of what happens when marijuana is readily available can be
found in Holland.  The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in the
1970s.  Since then, the use of harder drugs -- heroin and cocaine --
has DECLINED substantially.  If marijuana really were a "gateway" drug,
one would have expected use of other drugs to have gone up, not
down.  This apparent "negative gateway" effect has also been
observed in the United States.  Studies done in the early 1970s
showed a negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of
alcohol.  A 1993 Rand Corporation study that compared drug use in
states that had decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not,
found that where marijuana was more available -- the states that
had decriminalized -- drug abuse as measured by emergency room
episodes decreased.  In short, what science and actual experience
tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for harder
drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.
SOURCES
     The Dutch experience is written up in "The Economics of
     Legalizing Drugs", by Richard J. Dennis, The Atlantic Monthly,
     Vol 266, No. 5, Nov 1990, p. 130.  See "A Comparison of
     Marijuana Users and Non-users" by Norman Zinberg and Andrew
     Weil (1971) for the negative correlation between use of
     marijuana and use of alcohol.  The 1993 Rand Corporation study
     is "The Effect of Marijuana Decriminalization on Hospital
     Emergency Room Episodes: 1975 - 1978" by Karyn E. Model.
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