Quote:
Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Is there a good argument?
Do you want to make it?
It is certainly not the consensus opinion of Health Authorities in Oz.
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Yes - I believe there is a very good argument in support of the gateway hypothesis.
In South Africa, MJ is illegal. But, with the police being swamped by more serious matters, they basically turn a blind eye to the small-time dealers and users.
In other words, MJ is illegal
de jure, but is freely available with very little risk and is, for all practical reasons, a
de facto available drug like cigarettes and alcohol.
The dynamics of this system might be slightly different than the experience in the US, the UK or Oz - with quite a couple of interesting lessons to learn.
In the Western Cape, there's a serious problem with Tik usage. I don't know much about Tik, apart from the fact that it seriously scrambles your brains. And because of the social impact the big Tik-addict problem in the western Cape has, a lot of studies have been done on it. And you don't have to take my word for it, I will go and look for links and such, but for now just bear with me:
It turns out that the vast majority of Tik users (>90%) have started on MJ, which is, for all practical purposes, as freely available as cigarettes - and at about the same price, too. Users have reported that MJ is expressly taken to "trip out", and upon reaching a rather dissappointing plateau, they search for something stronger. This is not to say that they haven't consumed cigarettes and alcohol, too.
But the telling part comes in when an addict is in Tik rehab. When they come down from Tik, all they want is MJ. They don't care about cigarettes or alcohol, they can do perfectly without.
Some wild claims, surely - but I will go and look for links towards that study.
