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No Evidence Pot Use Leads to Hard Drugs: Research- Marijuana, No Evidence Criminalization Reduces Use Either, US-Dutch Study Finds.
By admin | August 1, 2004
CanWest News Service
by Janice Tibbetts.
Decriminalizing marijuana does not lead to increased use, says a new US study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
The reasearch also found no evidence to back up claims that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that leads to the use of harder drugs.
The conclusions came from interviewing marijuana smokers in Amsterdam, where marijuana can be legally purchased in licenced “coffee houses,” and San Fransico, where people who are caught smoking pot can receive a criminal record.
“Our findings do not support claims criminalization reduces cannabis use and that decriminalization increases cannabis use,” says the study by a University of California sociology professor and two professors with the Centre for Drug Reseach at University of Amsterdam.
Although the findings are a bit of a boon to the Canadian government’s plan to relax marijuana laws, a bill to decriminalize possession of less than 15 grams is in jeopardy and may not pass should Prime Minister Paul Martin call an election later this month as expected. The bill has been stuck in its final stages for more than a month because the Conservatives, who oppose the legislation, have propossed numerous amendments in an attempt to block its passage.
“We’ll have to see how it goes next week,” said Mario Lague, communications director in the Prime Ministers’ Office. “We would like to see it move forward and now we’re caught with this.”
If the bill clears the House of Commons, it would still have to go to the Senate for final approval, where it could receive a rough ride because the upper chamber has already issued a report calling for complete legalization rather than decriminalization.
Critics of the proposed legislation warn it will lead to increased use, threaten public health and create a stepping-stone toward more dangerous, harder drugs.
In the US study, the researchers interviewed about 500 randomly selected marijuana users who reported that they had smoked pot at least 25 times. The questions include their age when they started smoking marijuana, how often they smoked, their level of intoxification and their use of illicit drugs.
The researchers, who say it is the first comparative study examining whether criminalization constraints drug use or decriminalization increases it, reported striking similarities between marijuana users in the two cities.
The mean age when they started smoking was 16, and their mean age when they started using marijuana regularly was 19.
The study also found that the majority of users smoked similar amounts, even during their peak years of usage, and the vast majortiy in both cities did not exceed 28 grams per month. That is about 28 cigarettes, depending on how they are rolled.
The average age of interviewees was 31 in Amsterdam and 34 in San Francisco.
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