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Yale University did a study comparing Alcohol and Marijuana to discover which one is more of a gateway to other drug use.
The study wanted to investigate whether users of Alcohol or Marijuana in their young adulthood would be more like to turn to opiate prescription drugs.
The method used to determine the data was done by “demographic/clinical data from community-dwelling individuals in the 2006–2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. We used logistic regression analyses, adjusted for these characteristics, to test whether having previous alcohol, cigarette, or marijuana use was associated with an increased likelihood of subsequently abusing prescription opioids.”
Yale researchers concluded that Alcohol is more of a gateway to the use of the prescription opiate drugs than users of Marijuana in their young adult life.
According to the Journal of Academic Health Results here is what they said:
“Twelve percent of the survey population of 18–25 year olds (n = 6,496) reported current abuse of prescription opioids. For this population, prevalence of previous substance use was 57% for alcohol, 56% for cigarettes, and 34% for marijuana. We found previous alcohol use was associated with the subsequent abuse of prescription opioids in young men but not young women. Among both men and women, previous marijuana use was 2.5 times more likely than no previous marijuana to be associated with subsequent abuse of prescription opioids. We found that among young boys, all previous substance use (alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana), but only previous marijuana use in young girls, was associated with an increased likelihood of subsequent abuse of prescription opioids during young adulthood.”
What are your personal thoughts on this? Do you believe this to be factual or just coincidental?
