Pubdate: Mon, 09 Feb 2009
Source: Telegraph, The (Nashua, NH)
Copyright: 2009 Telegraph Publishing Company
Contact:  http://www.nashuatelegraph.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/885
Author: Kathleen Palmer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

Pot Debate

DEBATE GOES ON AT RECOVERY TALK

NASHUA - On a recent evening at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 
about 20 people, mostly men, filed into a meeting room.

They were part of a 12-step fellowship, all there to discuss their 
recovery from drug addiction.

Many of the attendees puffed down a last cigarette before the meeting began.

This night was a little different, though. They were asked to break 
from their normal routine to consider a solitary question - Do they 
consider marijuana a gateway drug?

"Look," Ric, 52, began. "I shot heroin for 23 years. Pot didn't 
'induce' me to do anything. I think for those of us who are 
predisposed to wanting to get outside ourselves, it doesn't matter 
what (drug) you start with. Labeling any drug as a 'gateway' doesn't 
make any sense to me. It's just not relevant."

The answers came as varied as the people at the meeting.

"I completely disagree," said Jon, 33, entering the room with two 
coffees in his hand. "Pot absolutely was a gateway drug for me. I was 
looking for something to test the waters with, that I knew I couldn't 
OD on, something safe, easy to get and pretty socially acceptable."

After about a year of using marijuana, Jon said, "it was creating 
more, new problems, not taking me away from the original ones. From 
there I moved on to other, harder drugs."

T.J., 31, took one of the coffees from Jon and waited for him to vent 
before talking about his own experience. "Personally, I did coke 
first. I just skipped pot altogether."

"What about alcohol?" Ric asked. "Did you drink alcohol before you tried coke?"

"Well, yeah."

"So that was your gateway, if we're using that terminology."

The three men discussed other options to be labeled the gateway drug 
- - alcohol, tobacco, the medicine cabinet.

Jon concurred, saying "Most kids these days are going straight to the 
oxy (oxycontin), pills, ecstasy or whatever."

A pretty, slightly built girl, 21, sat across the room with a toddler 
and a friend. She chimed in brightly, "I only tried smoking pot once. 
It made me sick; I threw up. So, I just went straight to smoking 
crack!" She laughed. Her delivery made it somehow OK for the others 
in the room to laugh, too.

"Basically," Ric stated, "all drugs lead to other drugs."

Jon agreed, adding that our brains are wired for the experience. "If 
you Google 'cannabinoid receptors,' you'll see that our own bodies 
have protein receptors built to receive stimulus from that chemical."

 From this discussion, the conversation segued towards the issue of 
legalization.

"Drugs made my life hell," Jon stated, "but I'm still in favor of 
legalization. It's exactly like Prohibition. All that did was make 
certain people rich, create a violent criminal element, and it didn't 
stop anyone from drinking, anyway."

Ric said he was in favor of marijuana legalization. It bothers him 
that marijuana is categorized as a Schedule 1 drug, the same as heroin.

"If it was separated from the harder drugs, wasn't lumped in with 
them," he said, "maybe users wouldn't look at it as a natural 
transition" to continue to use other drugs after trying marijuana.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom