Teen marijuana use leads to hard drugs: study
January 23 2003
By David Wroe
Health Reporter
A study of Australian twins has found teenage marijuana smoking may open doors to harder drug abuse because smokers expose themselves to a drug lifestyle.
Researchers from Queensland and the United States studied 311 same-sex twins, some identical. In each pair, one twin had taken up smoking marijuana by age 17, while the other had not.
The twin that smoked was two to five times more likely to abuse hard drugs or alcohol as an adult.
This "gateway hypothesis" predicting the transition from soft to hard drugs has long been claimed.
However, the new study suggests genes and family background are not such important factors, because identical twins have the same genes and grow up in the same households.
Full article at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/22/1042911436690.html
Good quote from Paul Dillon at the end of the article!
BigTrancer