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Gratuitous info request on drug progression

pseudoSym

pseudoSym

Bluelighter
Joined
May 24, 2001
Messages
249
Location
Sydney, NSW, Australia
I've been trying to find something to back up the claim that there is an inevitable progression from "soft" drugs to "hard" drugs.
ie the theory that if you use pot, you'll end up shooting up heroin.
Is there any basis to this belief or is it merely grounded in "common sense"?
Also, are there any statistics/studies/whatever that contradict it?
Thanks in advance!
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"The floggings with continue until morale improves"
 
i think it comes down to each individual person.
some people are more open to trying new things, others arent. i know plenty of people who have smoked pot and nothing else..
personally my progression went alcohol-pot-alcohol-ecstasy-speed and i cant see myself really going any further..
 
Well I went straight from alchemohol to MDMA. Never had pot, probably never will - just don't find it appealing. I am however probably in the minority.
 
I think that is something that puts regular ecstacy users a totally different class of drug users as say the likes of Heroin users.
The progression of drug use in relation to where people will cast their boundry to the degree of substance experimentation is somewhat limited with ecstacy users. Most will have tried Cannibas, Alcohol, LSD, and some may have used speed aswell. Yet the majority of these users are social users of the drugs, rather than dependant past time users as say, Heroin addicts.
I think there IS a progression in the use of 'harder' drugs simply as a result of the desensitization of harmful affects of drug. However, this is followed through an almost self-fullfilling experience in social terms, rather than the more self-destructive manner in which heroin is used.
I think the study is almost self-explanitory when you look at your group of friends and their history relating to drug use. Most people who haven't tried LSD or Cannibas, have also not tried ecstacy - because it is higher in the ladder of 'hard' drugs. I think the reason why ecstacy users do not progress on to use harder drugs is that they seek a different state of synthetic appreciation as apposed to heroin users and the like, who generally get a hit to lose touch with their surroudings and forget about the shit side of life. I know whenever I use ecstacy, it is for a social appreciation cause... not to lose track of my environment and feel good, but rather to enhance my present environment without the fear of getting hooked on something that could ruin my life.
So yeah, I think there is evidence to say that drugs like cannibas and LSD are those which, not cause as such, but act in bridging the psychological barrier associated with the decision to experiment on a particular drug.
 
Personally, it went alcohol, MDMA, speed, marijuana and so on....but I'm just weird.
But are there any studies/stats out there that confirm the common-held belief that marijuana leads to more "harder" drugs?
I was reading some of Barry McCaffrey's arguments against marijuana legislation and he mentioned it. I'd really like to track down where it all came from.
Edit: That's quite perceptive, dropped. That hadn't occured to me before! Much obliged.
smile.gif

[This message has been edited by pseudoSym (edited 20 October 2001).]
 
I can remember a little about this being mentioned in a great set of articles in the Economist. It might be worth doing further searches with the terms 'gateway theory' and such. Here's a snip of what was in the article:
Studies of the routes by which people come to take up drugs have had a huge impact on policy. Most influential has been the “gateway” theory, suggesting that soft drugs lead on to hard drugs: if cannabis is the path to crack cocaine, then clearly the sooner that path is blocked, the better.
In fact, this turns out to be nonsense. Certainly, most people who take “hard” drugs have usually first smoked marijuana. But, as Lady Runciman's excellent report on the misuse of drugs in Britain argued last year, for the “gateway” theory to be proved correct requires not just that cocaine and heroin users are highly likely to have taken cannabis; it also requires that cannabis users are highly likely to move on to cocaine or heroin. Yet the vast majority of cannabis users do not graduate to these more dangerous drugs.
Moreover, there is no reliable evidence indicating that taking marijuana pharmacologically disposes people to later use of heroin. But work at Johns Hopkins University shows that children who drink and smoke in their early teens are disproportionately likely to progress later to marijuana. And a study in Britain found that the probability of 11-to-15-year-olds using an illicit drug is strongly related to under-age smoking and drinking. Beer and cigarettes seem to be gateways to marijuana, but marijuana does not seem to be a gateway to other drugs.
Click to expand...
Umm there is a little bit more in this link. Unfortunately I can't find any links to specific reports at this time - but I hope this gives you some leads pseudoSym.
Good Luck
smile.gif

[This message has been edited by pundi (edited 20 October 2001).]
 
Hehe, got interested in finding the Runciman report mentioned above, and have found it here.
:: Drugs and the Law - Runciman Report ::
The stuff relating to gateway theory (as related to cannabis is on this page, with the only supportive link to be found between cannabis use and other hard drugs being:
Social, cultural and market conditions associated with cannabis use are a different matter. It may be that some cannabis users will go on to other drugs through the influence of friends or the pressure of other factors associated with problematic drug use, such as poverty and unemployment. The WHO concluded that the most plausible explanation for some cannabis users also using other drugs was
'....a combination of selective recruitment into cannabis use of non-conforming and deviant adolescents who have a propensity to use illicit drugs, and the socialisation of cannabis users within an illicit drug-using subculture which increases the opportunity and encouragement to use other illicit drugs.'
In particular, we take seriously the suggestion that pressure may be exercised by dealers on cannabis users to try harder drugs. If there is anything at all in the gateway theory, it is likely to be found in the structure of illegal markets.
Click to expand...
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"I saw wierd stuff in that place last night. Wierd, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff. And I want in." - H.Simpson
[This message has been edited by pundi (edited 20 October 2001).]
 
actually sym... my progression was much like yours...
alcohol, mdma, speed, weed, coke, etc...
smile.gif

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... "wisest is he who knows that he does not know" ... "someone prove i exist" ... asparagus? ...
 
First of all, my progression
alcohol - marijuana - (speed bomb) - mdma
And i want to try mushies, or lsd or something sometime in my future.
As far as the marijuana gateway theory goes, it's a crock of shit.
As was just pointed out, and should be obvious to all, users of marijuana have to contact the criminal element to make a purchase. The dealers are a shifty shady bunch who will most likely offer their customers other (addictive) higher priced drugs, even for free the 1st time maybe.
Thats the gateway, the illegality of marijuana is the gateway to the progression to harder drugs.
As far as the psychological side goes, i think that marijuana is the first drug most people try that does more than just "fuck you up", in a purely physical way.
I mean, alcohol doesn't make you think cool thoughts and find a whole new way of thinking like weed can do. Thus i reckon ppl try weed, and after mite make a responsible concious decision to try other drugs that they may not have tried unless they had smoked weed.
This could be construed as a gateway theory, but many people are just content with marijuana and don't progress to anything else.
The fact that many people who use cocaine and heroin also smoke marijuana is about the equivalent of saying every rapist also masturbates, so therefore masturbating leads to rape.
Its all bullshit people,
None of you mentioned tobacco in your progressions, am i assuming you don't or have never smoked it or you just didnt consider it relevant in the progression?
Anyway,
Adikkal
 
See the trend?
Rather than making claims about pot leading onto 'harder' drug usage, perhaps they should consider putting alcohol in its place. Would still prove squat, other than to make a point that there is nothing which necessarily leads onto anything else.
(Yeah, right... I can see that happening...)
 
well i think i am definately a minority but my drug progression is in reverse order to what seems to be the norm,
alcohol - heroin - alcohol - mdma - speed - pot.
The heroin use was depressingly at the age of young age of 16-17. It was a case of drug abuse to escape a depressing time. Under normal circumstances i wouldn't have jumped straight into such a 'hard' drug, but at the time i just didn't care and wanted to get royally fucked beyond alcohol abuse, which i was also stupidly doing on a nighty basis. As you can imagine my yr 10 marks weren't all that great, but luckily i cleaned myself up by the end of yr 11 and now wouldn't consider going near that sort of abuse again.
I don't know why i held off using pot, but it never had too much of an appeal to me. I can't say i ever really had a desire to try it. Had my first j last week and i can't say it was all that fantastic IMHO. I don't think i'll both with it in future.
 
thought id add my own personal progression as well to this thread.
alcohol - mdma - amphetamines - ghb - coke
id neva thought i would go any further than mdma/amphetamines sorta area. But i have.
As with most people it seems i started with alcohol.
 
From my understanding of research findings, I believe the conclusion that pot is a gateway drug comes from the study of ppl who use things like heroin. They are asked what their first experiences were with illicit substances, and most likely it's pot.
As far as I understand, they don't survey pot users as to their inclination to use other, harder drugs...
 
^^^^^Thats a good point.
Plus there's another whole in the gateway theory. If it were true - then shouldn't there be nearly an equal amount of heroin users as there are weed users? Because if everyone who tried weed, which is a lot of people - progressed to heroin or coke - then every 4th or 5th person would be a junkie. Which is clearly not the case.
People go as far as they are comfortable. I have many friends who tried weed and have never tried anything harder, and don't plan too. The theory may be true in some cases, but it's far too general a theory.
As for me it went - anti-depressents, codeine, cigs, alc, speed, weed, mdma, coke.
Munchkinz.
 
I guess that I must be considered to be fairly 'typical' in the lowering of my moral guards.
Alcohol -> Cigarettes -> Marijuana -> Pills -> Speed
I guess the next hurdle will be the headfuck, trips.
 
Well i didn't touch a thing at school except cigarettes and went from being an ANTI-DRUG person who hated people that took them... to POT - XTC - K - SPEED - TRIPS - SPEED - SPEED - SPEED - SPEED - SPEED
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What's the difference between fantasy and reality?
 
ahah I'm waiting for someone to say
alcohol->pot->speed->acid->2ct7->mdma->nitrous->ghb
from about 8pm through to 7am.
 
i think it's a lot to do with your overall mentality: if you're open minded enough, curious enough, stupid enough (call it what you will) to try any drug (beyond alcohol, which doesn't fully count because it's corporately shoved down your throat anyway), then you're going to be more likely to try a 'harder' drug. So it probably would appear that 'soft' drugs lead onto 'hard' drugs - but i think it might be more accurate to say that way of thinking leads onto (any) drugs.
dunno. just some random thoughts.
_________________________________________
ps./ read your topic as:
Gratuitous info request on drug posession
tee hee... made me laugh...
smile.gif

[This message has been edited by *Princess_Fifi* (edited 27 October 2001).]
 
Well my drug ladder was
Alcohol, pot, acid(whoa nelly), xtc, mushies, nitrous, a tiny itty bitty bit of speed.
Now i wanna get some new and different psychedelics, but the future is looking grim..
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You must have smoked some bad granola.
 
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