A report titled Tobacco: The Smoking Gun issued by National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University shows that teens who smoke cigarettes are more likely to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana than teens who do not smoke cigarettes. A press release and the full report are available from CASA. The implication, as you might guess from the title, is that tobacco use plays a role in leading teens to use these other drugs. They support this argument by noting that nicotine use effects the neurotransmitter receptor sites for dopamine and serotonin, two neurotransmitters involved in addiction and mood, respectively.
The numbers and science look pretty impressive, until you start to realize that this is all correlational data. When asked by Will Dunham of Reuters if smoking causes teens to abuse other drugs, former health secretary and head of CASA Joseph Califano had to admit “the jury is probably still out.”
Here is why this research does not deliver a clear verdict on cause and effect: A correlation shows a relationship between two variables. There are always multiple possible cause and effect relationships that could explain the relationship. An easy way to think about the possibilities is that X could cause Y, Y could cause X, or some other variable, Z could cause X and Y. In this case, we should wonder, for example, if nicotine causes marijuana use, or is it the other way around. And given what we know about individual differences in susceptibility to alcoholism and other addictions, we should certainly consider the possibility that these differences make some people more likely to use any and all of the substances they discuss.
There is no question that smoking is addictive and bad for you. But I’m not sure this report really does anything to further our understanding of the relationship between smoking and using other addictive drugs. Maybe it will spur somebody on to try a more clever research design.
I have read articles with this same argument before. In addition to the nicotine in cigarettes, they argue that alcohol and marijuana are gateway drugs. According to the Encyclopedia of Public Health, a substance that corresponds to the subsequent use of an illegal drug is a gateway drug. A study conducted by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, however, disproves this theory. From their experiment, they concluded that adolescents who used illegal drugs did so because they were prone to, not because of another drug. In addition, I think people who use illicit drugs because they don’t think they are harmful, and if they do, they are okay with it. People who consume nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana know it is unhealthy for them and they use it anyway. This applies with illegal drugs, they are unhealthy just like the “gateway drugs” but worse. I don’t think it’s a chemical factor that leads people to use illicit drugs, I think it’s a psychological one. I think this is especially true in teenagers who think they have a personal fable. Drugs from nicotine to cocaine are bad for you. Whether the use of one leads to another is uncertain. Avoiding this effect, whether it exists or not, is easy: Don’t do drugs.
Comment by Julianna Simon — November 4, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
ommmg !!! this dosent make any sense for goodness sake. Stupid websiters
Comment by Minnie — June 7, 2012 @ 12:23 pm