Pubdate: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 Date: 03/31/1999 Source: Wall Street Journal (NY) Author: Chad Thevenot Section: Editorial Page Note: referenced OPED http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n347.a07.html * Even Mr. Califano's own organization, the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), admits in its 1994 report on "gateway drugs" that a biomedical or causal relationship has not been established. Many unbiased experts believe that the most likely relationship between the use of marijuana and harder drugs is a person's propensity for risk-taking, which may even be exacerbated by the illicit market in marijuana, created by prohibition, which routinely exposes children and adults to harder drugs. In its landmark March 1999 report of marijuana's health effects, the Institute of Medicine agreed: There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone on the basis of its particular drug effect. In 1998, the World Health Organization stated emphatically that the gateway theory between adolescent marijuana use and heroin use is the least likely of all hypotheses. Chad Thevenot Washington