Marijuana: Is it Really the Gateway Drug?

At one time or another you are bound to have heard someone say that, “Marijuana is the gateway drug”. This statement indicates that marijuana is a drug that leads to the use of other licit and illicit drugs. Tristan Kirby and Adam Barry decided that they wanted to see what drug really was the “gateway drug”: alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Kirby and Barry had a sample of 14, 577 US 12^th graders and asked them if they had ever tried one of the above drugs and how often they had used them (Participants could choose options varying from “0” times to using “over 40 times”). Their results indicated that alcohol was the “gateway drug,” followed by tobacco and then marijuana.

These findings now allow us to know that alcohol is the primary “gateway drug,” but that marijuana is still a culprit in leading teenagers to take part in using other licit and illicit drug use. High schools should still teach students, especially incoming freshmen, about the dangers of all three drugs and encourage students to abstain from them.

            The major limitations of this article are, first of all, it does not ask participants the age in which they began using said licit or illicit drug. This could be very beneficial because then schools and organizations could have a better understanding of how young they should be informing adolescents/teenagers about the harmful and potentially long term effects drugs has ones body. There was also not much diversity in this study; 67.8% of the participants were white. This limits their findings because it does not take into consideration any other ethnicities. Further, this study does not take into account location of each student. Knowing where the student is from could help schools and organizations target drug use in places with high use.

Source:

Kirby, T., & Barry, A. E. (2012). Alcohol as a gateway drug: A study of

US 12th graders. Journal of School Health, 82(8), 371-379

. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2012.00712.x

Abstract