Monday, July 17, 2006

Daily Mail Science Proves Cannabis is a Gateway to Harder Drugs

This article from the Daily Mail, published on the 14th July 2006, reports the results of a study published in Neuropsychopharmocology which concludes that cannabis damages the adolescent brain, making it more susceptible to hard drug use later in life. Rats given THC in adolescent years were more likely to self-administer large quantities of heroin than rats which were not given THC during adolescence. The research also found "disturbances" of the endogenous opiod system or reward system of the brain. The conclusion of the study provides unfortunate ammunition to anti-drugs campaigner by focusing narrowly on the detrimental physiological effects of the drug. This type of narrow, editorial focus all too often blinds opinion-formers to the wider social, political AND physiological harms caused by prohibition.
This article, from 6th July 2006 in Science Now Magazine (http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/706/1) quotes the researchers of the above study stating "both groups of animals took the same amount of time to start taking heroin, suggesting THC use doesn't start them on the path to hedonism, but the THC-primed rats got more into it, suggesting it paves the way for increased use." This would therefore seem to refute the case pressed by the Daily Mail that THC consumption is a gateway to harder drugs.

2 comments:

daksya said...

Rats given THC in adolescent years were more likely to self-administer large quantities of heroin than rats which were not given THC during adolescence.

Actually, this study neither proves the gateway, nor 'increased use' either.

Both group of rates took the same amount of time to get started on heroin. The control group were more sensitive to heroin i.e. got similarly high with a smaller dose. Both groups became equally addicted, but the THC group stablilized on a higher maintenance dose as they were less sensitive, hence "more likely to self-administer large quantities of heroin".

Here's an interview with the lead author in ScienceNOW.

This image shows what happened when the rats were disconnected from the lever:

Graph.

The control group was more eager to get the drug source back!

Anonymous said...

If the rats accustomed to THC required larger doses of heroin to be satisfied than controls, does that not imply that cannabis increases tolerance to heroin?

If cannabis increases tolerance to heroin, then, pharmacologically, cannabis users are less likely to become heroin addicts than
non-cannabis users, yes?