Marijuana is often accused by the mass public and government officials of acting as a "gateway drug" for American youth.\nThe gateway hypothesis presupposes teenagers who toy with marijuana, smoke "reefer" or otherwise ingest "grass" are more susceptible to abusing illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin or LSD, to name a few. For example, early marijuana users were found to be "eight times more likely to have used cocaine and 15 times more likely to have used heroin," according to a report published by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.\nTobacco consumers must be 18 years of age or older and alcohol consumers must be 21 years or older in the U.S., according to state and federal law. Beyond the mere semantic debate about hard drugs versus soft drugs, academic and scientific research based on hard data reveals more prevalent illicit gateway drugs for American youth -- nicotine and alcohol. \nTobacco and alcohol use by minors, in other words, is illegal and poses a significant health and financial threat to the overall productivity and sustainability of the American way of life. Tobacco kills far more people around the globe, for instance, than alcohol and illegal drugs combined, according to the Pan American Health Organization. Tobacco use killed about 5 million people worldwide in 2000 -- including about 700,000 in the U.S. alone. Alcohol use contributed the death of about 2 million people more across the world and illegal drugs killed an additional 200,000 people. \nAccording to the PAHO, tobacco is a gateway drug that often introduces youth to other drugs.
SMOKING OUT THE WORLD\nThe US Surgeon General issued a report in 1989 declaring cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are addictive and that nicotine is the drug in tobacco that causes addiction. Health and science officials have identified more than 4,800 chemical compounds in tobacco smoke -- of these, at least 69 cause some form of cancer in humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. \nSmoking cigarettes causes chronic lung and heart disease, and cancer of the lung, esophagus, larynx, mouth and bladder, pancreas, kidney, and cervix according to the CDC. Consequences of using smokeless tobacco include cancer of the gums, mouth, and pharynx.\n"I see people who want to quit smoking cigarettes who have tried several times but they need help in making the quit attempt stick," said Anne Reese, director of health and wellness education at the IU Health Center. "Some students are motivated to quit because they're sick with a respiratory condition and they're having trouble getter better. Others are sick of spending money on nicotine. Others have a family member who is seriously ill because of smoking related problems. And other people just feel bad because smoking prevents them from participating in certain activities."\nDespite the well-documented negative personal and social effects associated with tobacco use, about 71 million Americans -- 29.8 percent of the population -- used tobacco at least once in the past month prior to the survey, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, including about 3.6 million young people aged 12 to 17.\nAccording to the CDC, more than 3 million young Americans under age 18 smoke 500 million cigarettes each year and more than one-half of them consider themselves dependent upon cigarettes. 48 out of every 100 Hoosier high school students ingested tobacco -- either smoked or smokeless -- during the past month, according to the CDC's 2002 Indiana Youth Risk Behavior Survey.\nWalt Keller, an alcohol screening consultant for the IU Division of Student Affairs, said he counsels many students whose alcohol abuse pales in comparison to their nicotine abuse.\n"My concern about overuse of nicotine is real simple -- it kills you," he said. "Nicotine is the most addictive drug for the students I see, and yet many parents don't have a qualm with their kids smoking. Some people don't attempt smoking cessation until they start coughing up their lungs. I tell students they are taking a substance that is going to destroy them."\nKeller said he has experienced the extreme difficulty of recovering from a nicotine addiction himself because is both a recovering cigarette smoker and an alcoholic. Changes in the human brain from chronic nicotine withdrawal are comparable in magnitude and duration to withdrawal from other abused drugs such as cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and alcohol, according to the NIDA.
DRINKING LIKE FISHES\nMinors are prohibited from purchasing or consuming alcohol in every state throughout the union. Despite the illegality of teenage alcohol consumption, 45 out of every 100 Indiana high school students surveyed drank alcohol in the previous month -- including 29 out of every 100 who reported "episodic heavy drinking" -- and 28 out of every 100 "rode with a drinking driver during the past month," according to the CDC's 2003 Indiana YRBS.\nReese said alcohol, similar to the illicit drug use of nicotine by teenagers, is a gateway drug that poses a significant threat to the health and well-being of young people.\n"A lot of students come to college with drinking habits already in place -- behaviors started in high school," she said. "The added freedom of campus life continues their drinking habit and their alcohol abuse is further reinforced by the peer groups they party with -- friends are chosen based on party habits, social activities revolve around drinking. Alcohol use can become an ingrained behavior that is difficult to change."\nAlcohol is the leading cause of death among youth, particularly teenagers, according to the Marin Institute, which works to reduce alcohol problems by improving the public environment. Alcohol contributes substantially to adolescent motor vehicle crashes, other traumatic injuries, suicide, date rape, family and school problems. Financial costs associated with underage drinking tax the nation $53 billion a year in medical related expenses.\nAbout 74 percent of adults aged 21 or older reported that they had started using alcohol before the current legal drinking age of 21, according to the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. More than 14 million adults aged 21 or older were classified as having either alcohol dependence or abuse.\nKeller said otherwise well-meaning parents often provide their children with mixed messages about alcohol use and abuse: "Do as I say, not as I do" or "do but don't get caught."\n"Many students believe they can drink like a fish to graduation and then they can move on, but the transition is usually more difficult because alcohol is an addictive drug," he said. "The whole premise of what I do on campus is to the raise the question: 'When is enough enough?' Some students are unaware of the risks of alcohol abuse until they get arrested or have other medical problems."\nBinge drinking is generally defined as averaging two drinks a day for a week or as having five or more drinks on one occasion -- meaning in a row or within a short period time, according to the CDC. Binge drinking is associated with a number of adverse health effects, including unintentional injuries and violence.\nKeller said a person with a .15 (blood alcohol content) has drunk the equivalent of a half pint of whiskey, which means they are walking or driving around in a "toxic state" of mind. \n"About 10 percent of the students with drinking problems I deal with get pulled out of school, they've dropped out of school, they were kicked out of school, they attempted suicide because of problems with alcohol abuse, they've gotten into drunken fights, they've been killed in drunken driving situations or they've killed someone else," he said. "The 'wink and nod' approach to drinking by parents is more rampant of a problem than advertising or Hollywood. The thing that probably grabs me the most is when I hear a student who doesn't express shame in using but instead expresses shame about getting caught, which they have little control over." \nAccording to the CDC, 17,419 people in the United States died in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes in 2002 -- 41 percent of all traffic-related deaths.
THE USUAL SUSPECT\nAccording to the CDC's 2003 National YRBS, about 24 percent of high school students had their first drink of alcohol other than a few sips before age 13, about 20 percent smoked a whole cigarette before age 13 and about 9 percent tried marijuana before age 13. 22 out of every 100 Hoosier high school students reported they had used marijuana, according to the CDC's 2003 Indiana YRBS.\nMost persons who will ever initiate the use of cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana have already done so by the time they are 20 to 25 years old, according to the Adolescent Substance Abuse Knowledge Base of the Aspen Education Group. Of those persons who had used all three substances, the predominant patterns were cigarettes (around age 13) then alcohol (around age 14) and then marijuana (around age 17) or alcohol then cigarettes and then marijuana.\nBoth Reese and Keller agreed that nicotine and alcohol pose a more significant threat as a youth gateway drug than marijuana based of the substance abuse prevalence rate of the students they council, the addictive nature and abuse potential of illicit nicotine and alcohol use and the detrimental health risks associated with tobacco and alcohol on the human body.\n"The first thing I say to students is 'you don't have to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, you don't see the whole campus at a party,'" Keller said.\nAccording to the NIDA, more than 14 million Americans age 12 and older used marijuana in the past month -- about the same number of alcohol abusers. More than 6 million age 12 and older used prescription medicines "non-medically" and the prevalence rates for cocaine, heroin and other "hard" drug abuse -- including marijuana, inhalants and steroids -- is statistically insignificant when compared to the rate of nicotine and alcohol abuse by teenagers. \nIn the United States, the claim that marijuana acts as a gateway to the use of other drugs serves mainly as a rhetorical tool for frightening Americans into believing that winning the war against heroin and cocaine requires a battle against the casual use of marijuana, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Not only is the claim intellectually indefensible, but the battle is wasteful of resources and fated to failure.
FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE\nSurveys show that parents are the biggest influence in their children's decisions about drug use, according to the ONDCP. Parents must actively engage in educating their children and help them make healthy decisions.\nAbout 80 percent of all persons who initiated the use of marijuana at age 25 or younger had previously used either alcohol or cigarettes or both, according to the AEG.\nKeller said the American "war on drugs" approach to combating youth substance abuse should focus the "potential for consequence and intervention" instead of "consequence only."\n"We have to get out of the social mindset that one drug is more harmful than another, legal or illegal, moral or immoral," he said. "We encourage people toward drug abuse by ads on television and Hollywood movies with beautiful women, fast cars, sports and drug use. Students get mixed messages ... Historically it's very difficult to label any particular drug a gateway drug for any other drug because our society teaches children that adjusting your consciousness is OK. We tell them, 'If you don't like your reality you can get out of it.' The more realistic threatening drugs for young people are nicotine and alcohol."\nAccording to the 2004 Monitoring the Future Study conducted by the NIDA, the "war on drugs" is being lost because the prevalence rate of most youth drug use -- including nicotine, alcohol and marijuana -- has decreased since 1994 except for cocaine, steroids, crack and heroin. The raw data does not suggest teenagers branch out from marijuana use to other "hard drugs." \nNegating the peer-pressure and mixed social messages transmitted to American youth about drug use, similar to most socialized modes of behaviors, often begins within the family setting and home environment.\nParents provide the most important example of acceptable drug-taking behavior for their children, according to Pres. Richard Nixon's 1972 National Commission on Marihuana (sic) and Drug Abuse. Marijuana users frequently have medicine-taking, cigarette-smoking or liquor-drinking parents.
