Nonsense. Places like California and Colorado are more plausible “gateways” to marijuana.
There is, of course, no magic substance in cigarettes that would lure one into marijuana smoking and there are plenty of marijuana smokers that are tobacco nonsmokers.
But since anti-tobacco forces de-humanized and otherwise marginalized smokers into cretins and miscreants, it’s not surprising to find a higher percentage of tokers among the smokers that still light up.
The media release is below.
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Study adds to evidence that cigarettes are gateway to marijuana
Researchers also find that college students who use both tobacco and cannabis smoke more cigarettes per month than users of tobacco only
WASHINGTON, DC – Teen smokers who rationalize their use of cigarettes by saying, “At least, I’m not doing drugs,” may not always be able to use that line.
New research to be presented Sunday, May 5, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, DC, supports the theory that cigarettes are a gateway drug to marijuana.
“Contrary to what we would expect, we also found that students who smoked both tobacco and marijuana were more likely to smoke more tobacco than those who smoked only tobacco,” said study author Megan Moreno, MD, MSEd, MPH, FAAP, an investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.
Dr. Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected incoming college students from two universities — one in the Northwest and one in the Midwest — to participate in the longitudinal study. Students were interviewed prior to entering college and again at the end of their freshman year regarding their attitudes, intentions and experiences with substances.
Specifically, students were asked if they had used tobacco or marijuana ever in their lives and in the past 28 days. Researchers also assessed the quantity and frequency of marijuana and tobacco use in the past 28 days.
Results showed that prior to entering college, 33 percent of the 315 participants reported lifetime tobacco use, and 43 percent of lifetime users were current users. In addition, tobacco users were more likely to have used marijuana than those who did not use tobacco.
By the end of their freshman year, 66 percent of participants who reported tobacco use prior to entering college remained current users with an average of 34 tobacco episodes per month. Of these, 53 percent reported concurrent marijuana use. Overall, users of both substances averaged significantly more tobacco episodes per month than current users of tobacco only (42 vs. 24).
“These findings are significant because in the past year we have seen legislation passed that legalizes marijuana in two states,” Dr. Moreno said. “While the impact of these laws on marijuana use is a critical issue, our findings suggest that we should also consider whether increased marijuana use will impact tobacco use among older adolescents.”
Future work should involve designing educational campaigns highlighting the increased risks of using these substances together, Dr. Moreno concluded.
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I’ve smoked non-tobacco herb for years, and the cigs don’t look any better to me now than they ever did. For my money, there’s no connection between them.
Non-tobacco user for life here.
I don’t know how old your mother is, but cigarettes have been referred to as “coffin nails” since at least the 1880s. People have known that cigarettes increase the risk of lung disease but chose to ignore those risks, especially when they are young and still invincible.
When my mother grew up, cigarettes were believed to be safe. People started smoking in college or shortly after high school, generally speaking, as a way of declaring adulthood.
By the time I was in high school, nearly all teens who began smoking did so as an act of defiance, not independence. The people who are choosing to smoke now, most of them, are rebelling youngsters. I suspect that crossing the tobacco line makes the marijuana line easier to cross but I think that’s the only point where they intersect. I think the key factor is the desire to annoy parents, teachers and other squares. I could be wrong.
I’d rather they smoke pot than cigarettes. Pot doesn’t have the nicotine that is in the cigarettes. The nicotine is what you get addicted to. It also stops your lungs from cleaning out the tar by putting the cilia to sleep.
Your sarc is correct.
Legalization will drop price dramatically. Users will have no incentive to bring in new users.
If I understand you correctly, I agree that marijuana is more likely a gateway to cigarettes.
I’d sooner think that smoking marijuana makes it more likely that your cigarette smoking will start or continue and the rest is hooey. At least with legalization, adolescent weed use is sure to drop. (/sarc off)