Is Marijuana the Gateway for Cocaine and Heroin or Not - Research Paper Example

 IS MARIJUANA A GATEWAY DRUG AMONGST TEENAGERS, WHAT PERCENTAGE OF TEENAGERS GO ONTO USE OTHER DRUGS 1.0 Introduction For several years, the opponents of marijuana policy reform have claimed that while the marijuana may not be as dangerous as the so-called “hard drugs” such as heroin or cocaine, its gateway may lead the users down the path towards the use of the most dangerous drugs. Fortunately, the science has weighed in and that nearly every research that has looked into this question agrees that the use of the marijuana is not the causal factor in the subsequent use of the more dangerous drugs (Kandel, 1975). Some researchers have even gone as far as claiming that its marijuana’s illegal status that is the real gateway. Because the use of the marijuana is illegal, those people that seeks to buy it must obtain it from the criminal drug dealers that maintain the inventory for the other drugs and they have the incentive of expanding their market for the new users. There are some researchers that view marijuana as the harmless drug. Many people smoke marijuana for the recreational purposes and even though the drug is considered illegal, they risk breaking the law and facing the consequences (Jenkins, 1995). Some of the issues that can arise in this research are; what are the impacts of legalizing the marijuana use? And that is marijuana is legalized, will those individuals that smoke for the recreational use continue to smoke it? Although marijuana has have not yet been proven to have the gateway effect, there are three drug initiation facts that supports the notion that marijuana use can raise the risk of the hard-drug use (Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1984). This include; the marijuana users are more likely than the non-users to progress to the hard drug use, most of the people that have used both hard drugs and marijuana have used marijuana first, and that the greater the frequency of the marijuana use, the greater the likelihood of the use of the hard drugs later (Hall, & Lynskey, 2005). This research aims at looking into various propositions and oppositions on the argument of whether marijuana has a “gateway effects” or not. 1.1 Research Question/Gateway Hypothesis Drawing on the stress and the life-course perspectives and using the panel data from the 1,286 south Florida young adults, the research will assess three critical questions in regard to the role of the marijuana in the gateway hypothesis (Kandel, 2002). First, does the use of the marijuana by the teens independently affects the subsequent use of the more dangerous substances? Secondly, if so, does the effect applies to the abuse of the other drugs (illicit)? Thirdly, does any of the causal effects of the teen marijuana use be able to survive beyond the adolescence or it’s a short term effect that subsidies as the adolescents transition to the adulthood? 1.2 Statement of Problem For many years now, scientists have abandoned the idea that the use of the marijuana causes the users to advance to the other drugs. It’s only in 1999 that the report that was commissioned by the Congress in finding the possible dangers of the medical marijuana (Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences) found out that the patterns of the drug use especially from the adolescence to the adulthood are regular (Pedersen, 2008). Since then, many research have failed to provide support on the gateway idea. While the study results vary, the sequence most often reported is that the cigarette and alcohol use usually comes first, followed by the marijuana use and then other illicit drugs. Though many governments and scholars alike have carried substantial research on the use of the marijuana in the population, they have failed to account for the massive correlation between the use of the marijuana and the other drugs (Golub, LaBouvie, & Johnson, 2000). This research will try to explore into details the link between marijuana and the other drugs ‘gateway effect” through the use of various statistics. 1.3 Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study is to determine whether the use of the marijuana can be a gateway for the teenagers into using the more dangerous drugs. The study will also try to use the statistical data to find out the percentage of the teenagers that go on to use the other more dangerous drugs as a result of the marijuana use. This is an important area of the study as it seeks to give a conclusive answer into the widely spoken part of the gateway effects of marijuana using the statistical data. The different units of the analysis that will be used in this study include; observational studies, self-report surveys, and among others. 2.0 Theoretical Review/Literature Review The aims at giving an explanation of the theories that underpinning the topic of discussion. Drug use, delinquency and aggression have been the focus of the considerable research. Within this literature, the investigators have differed in the extent to which the use of the drugs such as marijuana can have a substantial effects into someone engaging into the more dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine (Morral, McCaffrey, & Paddock, 2002). Recent research suggests that the recreationally used marijuana does not act as the gateway drug to the hard drugs like cocaine, heroin and alcohol (Bretteville-Jensen, Melberg, & Jones, 2008). Several research have addressed the question as to whether the marijuana can lead to the use of the harder drugs. Perhaps the more damning than any other accusation of the “gateway” hypothesis is that it fails in holding up in the face of the researcher’s statistics. For instance, the federal government’s own statistics in regard to the drug use shows that there was a rise in the marijuana usage between 1960s and the 1970s during which there was a substantial decline in the usage of the heroin (Bretteville-Jensen, & Biørn, 2003; Ainslie, 1992; Beenstock & Rahav, 2002) . Interestingly during this same period the usage of the cocaine was increasing. Over the last twenty years, the use of the marijuana have been fluctuating dramatically as compared to the use of the hallucinogens that have hardly changed. The federal government statistics further shows that although about 66 million Americans above 12 years old experimented with the marijuana at some stage in their life, less than one-third of the people have tried the cocaine (van Ours, 2003). According to the study that was published by the Centre for the Economic Policy Research, London, marijuana can lead to the use of the more dangerous drugs (Williams, 2004). The findings are based on the survey of the drug users in the Amsterdam over the 10-year period. The study by the Jan Van Ours of the Tilburg University in Netherlands shows that the marijuana users usually start to use the drug between 18-20 years, while the cocaine users usually start to use the drug between 20-25 years. The study concludes that marijuana is not the stepping stone for the use of the cocaine or heroin. The four surveys covering almost 17,000 teenagers were carried out in the Amsterdam in 1987, 1990, 1994 and 1997 (Ng, Krishnan, & McLachlan, 2012). The studies found out that there were little differences in the likelihood of someone taking up cocaine as to whether or not she or he had used marijuana. Although the significant number of the people in these survey did use the hard and soft drugs, this was linked to the personal characteristics and the predilection to the experimentation. A more recent study on the national data also does not support on the hypothesis that the increases in the marijuana use leads to the increased use of the hard drugs among the genera pubic. In the American Journal of the Public Health, Andrew Golub and Bruce Johnson of the National Development and the Research Institute in New York wrote that they young people who smoked marijuana do not always advance to the hard drugs. The research further found out that the gateway phenomenon of marijuana reflects the norms that are prevailing among the youths at the specific place and time. To date, most of the studies on marijuana have had the focus on the adults and the specific population subgroups. As a result, the patterns and correlates of the specific club drug use among the teenagers in the community have been underestimated (WU et al., 2006). Previous studies have also attempted to identify the gateway effect through the comparison of the patterns of the initiation of the hard drugs between marijuana users and the non-users, effectively using the non-users as the control group (Pudney, 2003). However, this approach can be problematic in situations when there is unobserved heterogeneity that makes the non-users and users systematically different from the other. However, in this study, the strategy is to restrict the analysis to those that have used marijuana before and to exploit the variation in the timing of the marijuana and the hard drugs initiation to identify the gateway effect. This will avoid the problem of having the non-control comparable control group. 2.1 Gateway Drug Theory The gateway theory states that the use of the less deleterious drugs can lead to the future risk of using the hard drugs or crime. The theory further argues that the use of the soft drugs like the marijuana can lead to the use of the harder drugs through the sequence of the stages (Fergusson, Boden, & Horwood, 2006). The theory states that the use of the marijuana can increase the taste for the other drugs or it can lead the users to believe that the other substances are more pleasurable or they are less risky that than the previously supposed (Horverak, 2006). The social and cultural version of the ‘gateway theory’ posits that by just being around cannabis and users are likely to end up trying and using the other drugs (Deb, & Trivedi, 1997). Additionally, there is an idea that a person who uses the marijuana habitually is likely to engage into the risk taking behaviors thus seeking the hard drugs. It’s worth noting that most of the physicians and scientists dismiss the validity of the gateway drug theory. According to the U.S Department of the Health and Human Services (HHS), states that most of the marijuana users don’t go on to use the hard drugs. The study further reveals that the reasons for the minority of the marijuana users that graduate to the harder drugs do not so because of the marijuana but rather because of the marijuana prohibition (Lyons et al., 1997). Some researchers propose that making marijuana legal can prevent the teenagers from progressing or being exposed to hard drugs. For instance, countries like Netherlands marijuana is allowed to be purchased in public by the government-regulated coffee shops that are designed in separating the young marijuana users from the illegal marketers of the hard drugs. As a result of this, only 1.8% of the Dutch teenagers have tried cocaine and the 75% of the adult marijuana users do not report the other drug use (Golub & Johnson, 2001). Therefore, it seems that when the marijuana markets are effectively separated from the hard drugs markets, marijuana can be a ‘terminus’ rather than the gateway drug. Although the gateway theory still remains the staple in the prohibitionist rhetoric, facts shows that this is a blatant falsehood. Additionally, any relationship between the use of marijuana and hard drugs can be linked to the most government policies that places the marijuana in the similar underground markets as the hard drugs like the heroin and cocaine (Fergusson, & Horwood, 2000). 3.0 Research Methodology 3.1 Research Design Research design is the plan, structure and strategy of the investigation concerned in order to obtain the answers to the research questions. The causal research design will be adopted in this study since it seeks to establish the relationship between the gateway effects of marijuana in relation to the other hard drugs (Lancaster, 1990). There are two research approaches in the social sciences; qualitative and quantitative research. In this particular research, qualitative research will be put into practice. Qualitative research is the situated activity that locates the observer to the world (DeSimone, 1998). The proposed research design for the study will be survey, observation, the use of the secondary data for the analysis, experiment and Instrumental Variable (IV) technique will be used. The technique was first used by Pacula (1998) to collect the past prices of the alcohol for the previous consumption of the drugs and the estimates of the gateway effect of the alcohol on the current use of the marijuana. However, IV has a limitation of finding the valid instruments. Our access to the unique data on the drug prices is used as part of the identification strategy but we will also adopt the method that doesn’t exclusively rely on the exclusion restrictions and hence the need for the instruments. As part of the research design, this study will employ the use of the bivariate mixed proportional hazard model (Heckman & Honorè, 1989). H1i t= λ1 (t) φ1 (x) u1 H2i t= λ2 (t) φ2 (x) δ (t|s, x) u2 The first equation defines the hazard for the initiation of the marijuana use at a certain age while the second equation estimates the hazard for the initiation of the hard drug use. The observed covariates (x) that will be used in this study can be categorized into the three groups. First is to isolate the effect of the cannabis through the control of the time-dependent covariates (piece of marijuana, cocaine, amphetamine, and heroin). Secondly, given the correlation between childhoods problems, gender, and the drug use, the research design will include self-reported and gender measures of the serious childhood problems with the friends, parents, school and police. However, in order to deal with the contrast of the previous studies, the latent class approach will be adopted in order to deal with the presence of the unobserved heterogeneity in the hazard functions (Heckman & Navarro, 2007). 3.2 Target Population According to the Cooper and Schindler (2003), the population element is the amount of the quantitative data on which the measurements can be taken. The target population for this particular study is the teenagers aged between 20-26 years old. The study period for this study will be nine months. 3.3 Sampling The study sample will consist of the individuals most of whom were initially or are at risk of starting both the marijuana and the hard drugs and then these individuals are monitored over time. The sample data will largely consist of the teenagers. 4.0 Data Collection and Analysis Procedures This chapter will sought to determine the description of the data that was initially used to establish the gateway effect of the marijuana. Both the Primary and the secondary data will be used for the purpose of this study. The data collection will involve two different data sources. The first data will be collected through the questionnaires that will be sent to the representative sample of the 21-26 years old teenagers. This will provide the information on the development of the drug use initiation in the general population of the youths. Apart from questionnaires, the surveys will be used as the means of the data collection. The survey will target the people aged between 20-26 years to get their opinions, knowledge or behavior in regard to the gateway effects of the marijuana. 4.1 Data Analysis After the data is collected, it will be analyzed used the two statistical tools that were discussed above. These are the bivariate mixed proportional hazard model and the latent class approach. In addition to these models, the data collected will also be analyzed using graphical and the visual inspection or the rates of the behaviors over the period of the study. 5.0 Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations This chapter is the summary of the findings presented in the chapter four in accordance to the study objectives. 6.0 Research Plan/Timetable The research timetable indicates the weighting of each of the part of the proposed thesis in terms of the percentage. 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