Chronic[les]: Gateway-Phobia

Author Texas Bix Bender has published a number of books filled with cowboy wisdom. He's said things like, "don't squat with your spurs on", or "there's more ways to skin a can than sticking its head in a boot jack and jerking its tail." One of my favorite little bits of brilliance has stuck with me since I first picked up one of his books over twenty years ago. "Don't be mad a someone who knows more than you. It ain't their fault."

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Trump administration has been mad at a lot of people lately...

Rather recently, Sean Spicer spoke on the issue of marijuana and enforcement of Federal laws in a somewhat sidelong manner. "I think that when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people," Spicer said. "There is still a federal law that we need to abide by."

He's right on the count of the opioid crisis. He's also right about there being Federal laws in place, though he stops short of saying that there will be more Federal resources used to enforce them in states that have legalized it for recreational use. Why he hits the brakes before making a sweeping statement like that, I don't know. Hasn't stopped anyone else in Washington lately.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management, has said "We know why there's an opioid addiction epidemic. ... I don't think there is really debate. It's because we have overexposed the population to prescription opioids. The driver behind that increase in opioid addiction has been an overprescribing of pain medicine, overexposing the population to a highly addictive drug."

The assertion that marijuana is a gateway drug is a relic from the days of D.A.R.E. We were told that we'd be surrounded by people pushing drugs at us. The practical manifestation of that claim resides in those who ended up in a doctor's office with some variety of persistent pain. A flowery way of saying that your local smack pusher was most likely your doctor.

In fact, no causative relationship can be found between marijuana use and subsequent opiate abuse. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study that correlates state passage of medical marijana laws with a 24.8% reduction in opioid related overdose deaths between 1999 and 2010. Considering an average of 33,000 opioid overdose deaths in the United States each year, that is not an insignificant number. It's roughly the number of firearm related deaths, and suggesting a therapy that would reduce that number by 24.8% would certainly garner legislative support. That is a quantum leap in mortality prevention, no matter what your stance is.

The JAMA study also points out that 60% of all opioid overdoses, whether intentional (suicide) or not, occur among patients legitimately prescribed opioid pain management therapies. It is a naked fact that overdoses among purely illicit drug users are in the minority. To Dr. Kolodny's point above, this is a crisis resulting from unchecked medical professionals.

Biological causality is really a better indicator of potential opioid abuse. People who have demonstrated use and abuse of things like alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana are likelier to become addicted to opiates. However, no causal link to marijuana can be established.

In previous articles, I have pointed out the complete vacuum of empirical evidence that ties marijuana to heroin. It is mildly addictive, at best, and functionally impossible to overdose. Some mental impairments have been associated with use in people who used at a young age. However, significant pathologies of any other type are completely absent, save for bronchial irritation (smokers cough).

Evidence doesn't just not support the idea of weed as a gateway drug, but it debunks it with every study published. Science, as Neal DeGrasse Tyson stated in a segment of Cosmos, follows evidence "wherever it leads." Right now, it's not leading to any gateways. So maybe we should quit repeating that disproved rhetoric...

Maybe we should focus on education for a bit instead of indoctrination. We'll have fewer people to be mad at because they know more than us.