Asymmetrical Information

It's been a looooong, looooong time, but I'd say pot and alcohol are more interchageable, while coke (we called it "power") is a whole other thing, for many obvious reasons. Re the above study, I'd expect more drinking among casual pot smokers, and no change among committed stoners.

FWIW, I've got a quickie response at the original link.

I would say that pot and coke usage was determined, for me(now, I'm going back more than 20 years), based on my current mood. Did I want to mellow or did I want to get revved? I don't recall ever using one to offset an over indulgence of the other.

YMMV.

I agree with your premise. Marijuana has no close substitutes. Although alcohol is arguably the closest, it is substantially different, and most other drugs much more so.

Cocaine would make a horrible substitute, for the reasons you allude to. Its a jump akin to "I'm out of the good scotch at home, so maybe I'll just snort a rail of crystal meth instead". Marijuana and cocaine have little to do with one another, other than both being illegal.

I think this is the first time I have ever seen you refer to those of us who read your blog and comment on it as your "users".

As a non-"user" who graduated college in the mid-60s, I cannot comment on interchangeability.

I think you missed an important point, "high school students". At that age they don't make reasonable choices about the future. What high school student is going to trade off an immediate real pleasure of smoking one with his/her friends against the vague potential of a random test sometime in the future?

Jane,

Like you, I'm not really into the current drug culture. I don't think, however, that buying drugs is like going down to the Lucky Mart for smokes. Every dealer does not carry every different drug, since they have different routes into the country and so on.

Since it seems unlikely that a high school student is going to keep in contact with a "backup" cocaine dealer just in case his pot connection is no longer useful, I doubt that kids switch over that way.

Also, it seems likely to me that a kid might very well deal a little pot to his friends, since the penalties for small amounts aren't too big, but be scared to death to deal cocaine or heroin to the same clients.

People always act like all drugs are strung out along some kind of straight spectrum, from "mild" (alchohol and nicotine) to "kill you" (crack). I don't think the drug users necessarily see it that way.

I wonder if random testing of adults (airline pilots, truckers, whatever) would give different results than with teenagers.

Teenagers are not so good at doing risk-benefit analysis. They're the ones driving 105 mph, saying "If it's my time to die, it's my time to die" as though their actions don't have anything to do with whether it's "their time."

If there was random drug testing, and I had been smoking pot at that age, I would have just smoked less frequently and made sure that I drank enough water to make the test meaningless.

By the time you get re-tested, the pot has worked its way out of your piss.

This, of course, is assuming that they were testing urine and not, say, hair cells.

In college (late 70's), I & my peers would consume whatever drugs were handy at the time, so I can see the argument.

Not sure what I would have done in the face of random tests though - what are the penalties? I skimmed the original study (link below), and I don't see what the punishment would be for being caught. Suspension for a week? semester? Expulsion? If the penalty is just a short suspension & the threat of additional testing that's not much of a deterent.

http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/YESOccPaper2.pdf

Marijuana and cocaine are scarcely interchangeable, and not just because of their different effects. Many people consider marijuana a fairly harmless substance, not really worse than alcohol, while cocaine has a much scarier, hardcore reputation. I wouldn't be surprised if this perception were especially true among young people of high school and college age.

And let's not forget the fact that cocaine is much more expensive. Another important consideration for young people.

Another non-user here, but in high school I regularly encountered no small number of casual users and at least one dealer (I assume based on a number of subtle cues, I never placed an order) -- due mainly to attending high school in a mixed-income community peripheral to a large city, and working in fast-food for a couple years of that.

Among the younger at least, pot is perceived as cheap and easy to get in recreational quantities, and relatively harmless. Correct on the first count, at least. Dedicated users may very well find it a gateway to harder drugs, or mix the uppers and downers, but pot is not plausibly interchangeable with anything other than alcohol.

But...I think, man, you DO know what you're talking about...because pot makes ya kinda slow and stupid, ya know?...and pretty soon you lose track of most punctuation forms besides the slow...trailing...three-dotties kind...

;')

Hmm. I'm curious to know if the study controlled for the subjects' history of achievement.

If Suzy Student and her friends are high achievers on paper, they're also likely in contention for team sports and academic honors, and would have something to lose. Such students are also more likely to have parents who provide emotional and financial support to their efforts, which surely must correlate with less drug use.

Stoners, meanwhile, don't give a s**t - they're saving their energy and aspirations for what comes after high school, which to them is a purgatory in which they demonstrate they can follow diretions and/or work the system (some more successfully than others). The implication of the sitemistress' earlier post on the net benefit of fancy-pants private postsecondary degrees bears this out.

Even in environments where the stoners get singled out for testing, the two groups have entirely different goals, and entirely different risk-to-benefit coefficients when it comes to hittin' the maryjane. (A student who's disruptive enough to get singled out probably isn't going to care if he gets sent to an alternative school, anyhow.)

...Just a few thoughts.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of drugs, grab a copy of "Cain Toads: An Unnatural History by Mark Lewis." It is now available on DVD, and it is the Monty Python of nature documentaries: ostensibly documenting the progress of the Cain Toad across Australia after introduction, but funny as the dickens (partly by incident and partly by intent).

At one point they interview (in underexposed anonymity) a junkie who is smoking the toad's hallucinogenic poison, and who proceeds to fulfill every stereotype of a perennial drug user's locution problems.

If you like anarchic humor...

Long time reader, first time poster. I just finished my undergrad in Econ, so pardon my ignorance and arrogance. But it would appear that the legal recreational drugs are perfect compliments. People who do not smoke, sometimes will have smoke when drinking. Caffine and tobacco appear almost inseperable to many consumers.
In regards to random test. Can an addicts (physical or psychological) stop using regardlessof the cost? And what are the cost testing positive?

I'm just as innocent (probably more) than Jane, but I'm really curious: is marijuana a gateway drug?

I get the feeling it isn't, but I'd love to hear what other people think...

Klug: Don't forget the worst gateway drug of all: dihydrogen monoxide. Every drug user, without exception, consumed gallons of dihydrogen monoxide before taking up other drugs, and most of them continue to consume over a gallon a week.

Oh no, that dreaded dihydrogen monoxide. Did you know that in vapor form, it is the most prevalent greenhouse gas? And yet you don't see it mentioned much.

I've talked to Marines who get high in their spare time on particular prescription drugs, chosen because they know what does and doesn't show up in the tests. So yes, testing does push users to try other things, at least in some cases.

You know, markm, I wasn't born yesterday. But I still am interested in the question... I suppose that alcohol would be the real gateway drug. Who knows.

Klug:

Marijuana is not a gateway drug. Drug users like drugs. Whatever is handy they will try. Most users of cocaine or speed tried marijuana because it was prevalent when they first became drug users. Of course they also tried cigarettes & alcohol & lattes at some time. If pot had not been around, they would still have tried more powerful drugs at some point.

my 2¢ for you from personal experience.

I'd prefer to believe my lieing eyes, which have heard any number of patients say the opposite, and say of the study, 'Do it again,' and look for reasons contrary to typical fact in the studied population. I don't think we need to look any further than Marlboro man, the image was 'be cool, be in control as an individual, not afraid (like sissies afraid of smoking).' If the penalty is to be a Marlboro man, what do you expect?

I'm sure we all knew people in high school (maybe us) who liked to get wasted, either occasionally or frequently. The specific drug used often varied. I had friends who generally used pot and alcohol but who would also do speed, LSD, ecstacy or cocaine if those were available. They are radically different, yes, but they're also all fun (at least for some people).

So I agree with Julian. I would expect pot use to decline (because it is so easy to detect), chemical drug use to decline less, and people with no strict drug preferences to shift somewhat towards the less-detectable drugs.

Been reading a while, so I thought I would post on this subject.

Been a pot smoker for years, and have to say that it would be highly unlikly that a school age user would use cocaine as an alternative, mainly due to the cost and the differing effect of the two drugs.

I will also say, do not assume that those students that do use dope are the students that don't care about school or are any less academic. The vast majority of pot smokers I have encountered in my life (including a number of my friends) are highly committed students and workers, and they see (and always have) pot for what it is a recreational drug. It does not always impact on their schooling or work ( for some individuals it can, but I belive that those individuals would have problems with school and work even if pot never existed)

In terms of a gateway drug, it is hard to say, in terms of introducing people to the good feeling of getting high, I think booze is more of a gateway than pot. But as for introducing an individual to the dealer system, it can act as a gateway to the sources of other drugs on some occasions, bearing in mind that most dope dealers only deal dope and usally only sell to mates to pay for their own weed. but there are bad dealers out their that may introduce young people to more exteam drugs.

The real switch has been away from illicit street drugs to controlled prescription drugs obtained illegally. The Rx drugs are preferred for their perception of respectability (it is medicine, after all), ability to conceal/pawn off possession, and rapid movement through the system.

Acting as gateway drug stepping stones are cigarretes (introduces hiding behavior from parents and circumventing legal obstacles to obtaining), alcohol, and then pot. Some stop at that point, but others jump off into the full spectrum and will try anything. We learned this pattern piecing together the history of my brother's drug addiction.

Cocaine is a far-off concept to most high school students. It's not even considered in the realm of possibilities and is usually perceived as extremelly dangerous and addictive (which it is, but it's not like what they tell you in DARE, where you do it once and you can never stop). This perception fades in college when you realize that coke is actually very prevalent, but well hidden.

It is common street wisdom that we all have a drug class of choice: either amphetamines (speed, coffee, nicotine, cocaine, etc) or depressants (alcohol, marijuana, prescription pain pills, muscle relaxers, tranquilizers.)

Many people mix “ups” and “downs” but generally have a strong preference towards either speeding themselves up or slowing themselves down. How many of us had multiple cups of coffee to get going this morning and will cap off our night with an alcoholic beverage to help us relax?

So-called Gateways tend to follow class; most pot smokers have no interest in amphetamine-types of stimulus, they are more likely to experiment with prescription pain killers than illegal amphetamines.

One of my friends who knows far more than I do on the topic said that the problem with marijuana (as a gateway drug) was the people that you meet while buying it.

In HS, I'd say they are somewhat substitutes. You may not be looking for weed specificialy, just anything you can get your hands on to get f*cked up and have a good time. Hell, in college we'd pretty much take whatever we had available at the time; Alchohol, weed, blow, crystal, acid, shrooms, whatever. But as others have pointed out, weed is much more widely available than most of these other drugs.

wHAT IS IN THE WATER OVER THERE

French Student Protests Turn Violent

"the problem with marijuana (as a gateway drug) was the people that you meet while buying it." In other words, it is a gateway drug because it is illegal and therefore dealers in it are likely to also sell the more profitable hard drugs.

I'd have thought the shift would be more towards ecstacy than coke.

Jane, honestly, you're missing out. :-)

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