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Comment by ttt0 | Hacker News Reader

> So this study basically shows that cannabis users are more likely to experiment with other drugs

I didn't even need a study to know that. Why people are so in denial about cannabis?

Public school anti-drug programs told kids that cannabis use often leads to other drugs, and also said that it would make you peal your skin off to get rid of the spiders.

They casually mixed truth with lies to create the most frightening narrative possible. But once the lies became apparent, everything they ever claimed came into doubt.

It would be interesting to see how legalization in countries like Canada curbs this. Weed dealers are rarely just selling weed, and often harder drugs. To me it's not clear if this means "cannabis use leads to higher risk behaviour w.r.t drug use" or "exposure to drug dealers increases risk of trying other drugs". I see no clear reason to believe this over the other hypothesis.

Australia is not a country where cannabis is legal, so its system, and therefore impacts, are much less useful for study than a nation which takes a more modern approach to cannabis.

My theory is that using cannabis as a coping mechanism to dull your mind to some other sort of trauma or despair will often lead to harder drugs. Cannabis is not a good drug for such coping because with sustained heavy use it will inevitably lose it's efficacy. When a well adjusted healthy person develops a cannabis tolerance, they can take a break for a few weeks to reset their tolerance. Not a big deal. But somebody who's using cannabis to cope? Going sober for a few weeks may be intolerable, but weed is no longer helping them, so many turn to another drug. Consider that coping with problems instead of addressing them directly often leads to worse outcomes in the long run, since many problems can get worse the longer you ignore them. This makes the apparent need for another drug feel even stronger in this sort of person.

In brief, cannabis cannot solve your problems and trying to mask your problems with cannabis is often the start of a downward spiral.

This comment really is at odds with a lot of current research, especially with respect to harm reduction and medical usage.

The exact opposite of your theory is pretty clearly demonstrated in the medical literature with respect to risk escalation. Cannabis use is correlated with reduction in mortality rates, and lower frequency use of hard drugs in chronic substance abusers. It facilitates a risk deescalation for hard drug users.

Literature does indicate that those abusing a substance are more likely to abuse other substances, however there is consensus that there is no gateway effect. Essentially, there's no way to determine causality in these situations, as poly-drug addiction is a complex illness. Lastly, these results were for people who's use disorder escalated to the point where they were checked into an inpatient care facility. That's not the type of quasi-medical use you describe.

See, for instance:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1080/095952399967...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15265...

This is exactly the non-argument people use for antivax, religions, cults, ... "who needs science when I know I'm right?" Anyone can say this about anything and it leads nowhere.

There's a fundamental difference between beliefs stemming from faith (or gut feel, anecdotes etc) and results from rigorous and falsifiable experiments, even if they happen to agree.

It's not faith, it's called experience. Every single one of my friends that regularly smoked weed, regardless of social or economic status, ended up using harder drugs. Despite the fact that we had a very strong culture of looking down on people using hard drugs as junkies. But sure, I have to deny my own senses, because they're not peer-reviewed and I should smoke weed by default until some scientists will tell me otherwise.

That's called anecdotes, and I have exactly the opposite experience in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Germany - maybe there's a cultural factor rather than something intrinsic to cannabis?

So, who's right now? By what process should we try to get to the bottom of this?

As a thought experiment, consider if coffee (caffeine is very much an addictive mind altering substance that can be harmful in large doses) were illegal and bought and used the same way people use cannabis. So you go to your coffee dealer, and he offers you some weed. Do you try it? Maybe. Ok, now he offers you some heroin. This is where studies should step in, but my not very meaningful belief / gut feeling is that most people will say holy crap, no thanks man, I just wanted my boring old beans and weed. This has been my experience (and that of people I know) for decades, and again I'd like to stress that that doesn't necessarily imply a great many general statements I might wish to conclude from it, no matter how "obvious" it seems to me.

I'm right, because what I'm saying is reasonable. Recreational drugs are not necessary for you to survive and thus you shouldn't risk using them if there is a possibility of them ruining your life. It's common sense.

edit: This isn't some though experiment, it's real life with real life consequences. Science might be helpful, fun and all, but I don't need a rigorous science to make my life choices and stay away from things that can potentially harm or kill me. Even if I'm basing my judgement on anecdotes. Life simply doesn't work that way and it doesn't matter if you think it's not 100% reliable.

All of the people that I know that have used hard drugs also use cannabis. The opposite is not true at all, though.

Living where weed is legal, I know dozens of people who regularly smoke weed and do no other hard drugs.

Some of them are health nuts who don't even use caffeine or alcohol. (Caffeine and alcohol are proven to cause more bodily harm than cannabis at any dosage)

With few exceptions, the entire population of weed smokers that I know have successful careers, are social, and have good family lives.

There's some anecdotes for you.

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