🌉 Cannabis is a gateway drug

When I was growing up, I was a shirt-carrying member of the D.A.R.E. program, as were most millennials. D.A.R.E stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and in my case, it involved contrived presentations by portly police officers outlining the extreme dangers of drug experimentation.

In one instance, Officer Something told my fourth grade class, in detail, about the time he and his partner had unloaded 18 rounds into the chest of a maniacal criminal who was charging them. This particular criminal was high on PCP, so shots 1 through 17 barely phased him.

So - yeah.

We also had to write long essays - pledges of allegiance, really - on why we would never touch drugs or alcohol. Indoctrination at its very best.

Of course, all of this was nonsense. It was a result of the racist and wrong-headed War on Drugs, a Nixon brainchild that consistently and systematically persecuted minority populations across the country. For forty years.

🌱 The (Reverse) Gateway Drug

Outside of truly vulgar and self-aggrandizing narratives of police violence, one of the more common discussions in my D.A.R.E. program was how cannabis (always called “marijuana”) was a “gateway drug” - meaning that one puff of a cannabis joint could lead to a life of crime and frequent abuse of hard drugs.

The reasoning went that cannabis was addictive, and, should you partake, you would forevermore be searching for a more intense high. That would lead to cocaine, and crack, or pills or heroin. Then you’d die.

Over the years, via anecdotal evidence and now (finally) some peer-reviewed scientific research, we have determined that cannabis is, indeed, a gateway drug. Or, perhaps we should call it a “reverse gateway drug,” because people seem to be weening themselves off of hard drugs - or avoiding them altogether - by using cannabis.

👩🏽‍🔬 What does the data say?

In 2020, a study out of Columbia University found that opioid prescriptions declined by 20% in states with a medical cannabis program vs. prohibition states. For everyone counting, zero people died from cannabis in 2021, and 70,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2021. Many of these deaths are a result of abusing valid prescriptions…

In short - opioid prescriptions are bad for most people, because opioids are incredibly addictive and, if they are abused, they will kill you. Safe access to cannabis allows people to avoid that path altogether. 

In 2022, a study published in Health Economics explored the relationship more broadly, and focused on the the connection between adult-use (“recreational”) cannabis and prescriptions for some common ailments like anxiety, sleep, pain, and seizures.

Common medications for anxiety (benzos), pain (opioids), and sleep (sedatives like Ambien) are all implicated in overdose deaths. Reducing dependency on these drugs at a population level is. a. good. thing.

So - yeah, it’s a gateway drug. It’s just a gateway that leads from hard drug overdoses to a safe, happy existence.

📚 tl;dr

• My D.A.R.E. classes were a misguided attempt to ensure kids didn’t dabble in drugs

• A common talk track in those classes was that cannabis was a ‘gateway drug’

• As it turns out, states with access to medical cannabis see a reduction in opioid prescriptions by 20%

• States with recreational programs see a drastic reduction in common medications for anxiety, pain, and sleep

• Cannabis is a gateway drug - it’s just a reverse gateway that leads to safety and happiness

• It is Wednesday