comments arising from your editial

Read "The Iron Law of Prohibition" in Wikipedia and check the definition of "spurious relationship".

Your excellent article ("Legal or not, marijuana use remains a 'rocky' road") got  my full attention. One sentence really got my attention:

"It's a gateway drug, they say, and one former drug abuser testified to that at the forum."

This is an opinion expressed as a truth.

I was a US Navy Drug and Alcohol Program Advisor (DAPA) from 1986 to 1988. At the one week class, I asked the "is it a gateway drug". The lead instructor said "no". This hypotheses  was based on interviews of heroin and cocaine addicts admitted to rehab centers. Their "analysis" was:

1.  Addicts "used" marijuana before using "hard drugs". Therefore marijuana was a gateway drug to "hard drugs".
2.  The "hard drug" users also said they smoked cigarettes and drank beer before smoking pot. They were not considered gateway drugs to marijuana and this was called a spurious correlation. However, using the assumptions in statement #1, then cigarettes and beer should be listed as gateway drugs to marijuana.

Apply the logic of if A leads to B and B leads to C, then A lead to C. You get this amusing result:

          Cigarettes and beer lead to marijuana  usage (A leads to B)

          And marijuana leads to "hard drugs" (B leads to C),  therefore

          Cigarettes and beer are gateway drugs to "hard drugs".  (A leads to C)

I find this highly amusing…

I recommend this matter be studied in a scientific manner.

Study the pot smokers in Holland and see how the hard drug usage rate changed after folks started smoking in pot lounges. The deafening silence on this suggests that pot smoking does not lead to hard drug usage. Check the pot smokers in Colorado to see how many "graduate" to hard drugs.

We need hard facts and not just wishful thinking…

To change the subject, I don't think teenagers should be drinking booze or smoking pot and no one should be using harder drugs. There has to be a good reason for drug usage and that usage appears to come from economic reasons.  These reasons need to be addressed…