Supreme Court: Cigarettes Are The Real Gateway Drug

This article was originally published on the Marijuana Patients Organization site on August 30, 2013.

Cigarettes regularly serve as the starter drug delivery agent. Cigarettes deliver the drug nicotine. Children are being hooked on cigarettes at an early age. Nicotine has demonstrated dose-related euphoric effects similar to those of cocaine and morphine, say J. E. Henningfield, K. Miyasato, and D. R. Jasinski, “Cigarette smokers self-administer intravenous nicotine,” 19 Pharmacol Biochem Behav (#5) 887-990 (1983).

“Addiction is a chronic, incurable disease, but it is preventable,” and “Preventing addiction may prevent your family’s destruction,” says John C. Fleming, M.D., and his book Preventing Addiction: What Parents Must Know to Immunize Their Kids Against Drug and Alcohol Addiction.

“The first step toward addiction may be as innocent as a boy’s puff on a cigarette in an alleyway,” said the U.S. Supreme Court in Robinson v California, 370 US 660, 670; 82 S Ct 1417; 8 L Ed 2d 758 (25 June 1962).

This was repeating a fact already long known. The government already long ago knew that “all” drug addicts are smokers, say Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger and U.S. Attorney William F. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953).

Cigarettes’ toxic chemicals impair impulse and ethical controls, i.e., cause addiction, brain damage, abulia (impaired reasoning, ethical controls, willpower). But there is some mythology out there among laymen as to which drug is the earliest used by children. Is it alcohol? tobacco, or marijuana? The solution is to read material that actually covers that exact point, the age of onset issue.

It is typical that cigarettes are the starting point. They are delivery agent for nicotine, the gateway (starter) drug for children. The average age of onset is 12. Next in sequence, alcohol follows, average age of first use is 12.6; then marijuana, average age of first use is 14. “The Role of Cigarettes in The Initiation And Progression Of Early Substance Use,” 14 Addictive Behaviors (#3) 261-272 (1989).

“Tobacco holds a special status as a ‘gateway’ substance in the development of other drug dependencies not only because tobacco use reliably precedes use of illicit drugs, but also because use of tobacco is more likely to escalate to dependent patterns of use of most other dependence producing drugs. . . .

“These observations have led growing numbers of researchers and policy makers concerned with illicit drug use to consider the role of tobacco in programs aimed at preventing other forms of drug abuse.”—Jack E. Henningfield, Richard Clayton, and William Pollin, “Involvement of Tobacco in Alcoholism and Illicit Drug Use,” 85 British J of Addiction 279-292, especially p 283 (1990).

Moreover, “tobacco use is associated with the initiation of use of other addicting substances, and increasing levels of tobacco use are associated with increasing levels of use of other psychoactive substances. “Furthermore, factors affecting initiation, abstinence, and relapse to the use of tobacco, alcohol, and opioids are similar in nature.

“In addition, there are similarities in the addictive processes underlying the use of these substances.”—Henningfield, Clayton, et al., “Involvement of Tobacco in Alcoholism and Illicit Drug Use,” supra, especially p 279 (1990).

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that daily use of marijuana is 20 times higher among high school seniors who smoke tobacco, and the daily use of other illicit drugs is 13 times higher among smokers.” [Fishburne PM, Abelson HI, Cisin I, “National Survey on Drug Abuse: Main Findings, 1979” (1980)], cited by Joseph R. DiFranza, and M. P. Guerrera, “Alcoholism and Smoking,” 51 Journal of Studies on Alcohol (#2) 130-135 (1990).