Teen contraband cigarette use linked to other drugs

[poledriver]

Teen contraband cigarette use linked to other drugs

Reuters Health - Compared to those who don’t smoke illicit tobacco, kids who do are more likely to try other illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, according to a recent Canadian study.

The researchers used survey data from one point in time, so they can’t say that smoking illegal cigarettes leads to drug use, only that the two often coincide and that’s enough to warrant stronger tobacco control policies.

“The concern for us is that contraband tobacco may be a gateway to other drugs, but we cannot infer causality,” said coauthor Mesbah F. Sharaf of the economics department at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

In Canada, unmarked and untaxed contraband cigarettes are either illegally manufactured domestically or illegally imported across the U.S. border, often from Native American reservations, the authors write in The Journal of Primary Prevention.

They cite a national survey from 2007 that found 18 percent of all cigarettes used by teens who smoked daily were contraband.

“Here in Canada the contraband market is really substantial, almost 30 percent of tobacco sales in the whole country,” Sharaf told Reuters Health.

For the new study, he and his coauthors used data from Canada’s 2010-2011 Youth Smoking Survey, a school-based survey of kids in grades six through 12.

It included questions about smoking unbranded or Native American-brand cigarettes over the previous twelve months as well as use of amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and ketamine over the same period.

Focusing on the answers from kids who smoked, the researchers found that 31 percent of them had used contraband cigarettes at least once in the previous year. And contraband cigarette smokers were more likely to report using other drugs than kids who only smoked legal cigarettes.

Twenty percent of contraband cigarette users reported trying heroin, compared to three percent of non-contraband smokers. For hallucinogens, 46 percent of contraband smokers reported trying it, compared to 30 percent of non-contraband smokers.

“The issue of illicit tobacco is a prominent problem worldwide,” said Dr. Russ Callaghan, associate professor in the Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, who was not part of the new study.

Cont -

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/us-health-teens-contraband-idUSKBN0JW2FJ20141218

 

[_DankOpiAmp_]

There wouldn't be contraband cigarettes if the psychopathic government wasn't so he'll bent on raping as much tax revenue as possible from citizens' slow death from their legal addiction.

The heroin figure is surprising though. In BC it is probably far easier to obtain but heroin only dealers are almost unheard of in the rest of Canada.

 

[neversickanymore]

Compared to those who don’t smoke illicit tobacco, kids who do are more likely to try other illegal drugs like cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, according to a recent Canadian study.

Another take would be risk taking kids are more likely to take risks. Another way to view this would be people who smoke cigarettes are more likely to take other drugs. People who are more likely to ignore one law may be more likely to ignore others. What is the real cause of this relationship and what are the real dynamics of this relationship?

 

[S.J.B.]

There wouldn't be contraband cigarettes if the psychopathic government wasn't so he'll bent on raping as much tax revenue as possible from citizens' slow death from their legal addiction.

The heroin figure is surprising though. In BC it is probably far easier to obtain but heroin only dealers are almost unheard of in the rest of Canada.

Yeah, the Canadian government has given us a great example of how going too far with taxation undermines the regulated market for a drug. The taxes on tobacco here are far beyond reasonable, and this has resulted in a significant black market. The city where I went to high school, Cornwall, Ontario, was a smuggling hub for native cigarettes. Being a smuggler was exceedingly common and people didn't even try to hide it. I remember walking into a friend's garage and seeing hundreds and hundreds of large boxes packed with them. If you smoked cigarettes, then at some point you would have smoked natives (I would imagine close to 90% of people in that particular city who smoked cigarettes had smoked the smuggled variety at one point or another).

I am also surprised by the heroin figure, that seems unbelievably high. We certainly have lots of "heroin only dealers" but Montreal is the biggest heroin hub outside of B.C., in the rest of the country (except perhaps the GTA) I can't imagine it being that consistently available. Weird.

 

[Crankinit]

The figures aren't actually that huge when you break them down. 30% of 'kids who smoked' (and they don't qualify what percentage of the total population that is, or exactly what qualifies a kid as a 'smoker') had tried "contraband cigarettes," and 20% of those had used heroin. Given that an inclination to use one substance is generally indicative of a broader inclination towards substance use (ie. who doesn't love a cigarette while nodding), and that exposure to the black market (either at the heroin or the cigarette end of things) means exposure to a wider variety of substances (kid goes to pick up a gram of H, his dealer offers cheap smokes without needing an ID - of course a lot of them are gonna accept, and to a lesser degree I'd imagine it also flows in the other direction), this doesn't really seem earth-shattering.
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