It's one of those sayings which have all gotten sick of hearing. The fact that cannabis is a route which leads people on to harder, more potent drugs.

Many studies have looked into this 'gateway' theory in quite some detail. Simply put, a gateway to the brain or body is openned up when a child starts smoking from an early age and this leads to stronger (and often more deadly) drugs.

Outside factors such as social influences need to be taken into account of course, and this is what make such studies so difficult to do. The case of the Australian twins is interesting as all the social and influential factors were kept almost the same. Sets of twins which had grown up in similar environments were studied where one had smoked grass during their younger years while the other one didn’t. The study showed than a significant number of those which did smoke cannabis moved on to other substances.

Another similar experiment with teenage subjects showed that they were 15% more likely to take harder drugs if they had been smoking around the age of 15.

A study on rats and mice showed that then when they consumed THC on a regular basis they were much more prone to eat heroin in increasing quantities than those that didn’t. This would then back up the gateway theory as there are no social or peer pressure influences in this situation. Many people which smoked cannabis in their teens were proven to be serious heroin users later in life.

Although all these studies are done on the effect that cannibus have on your body and mind a person should never loose sight of the social effect it can have and the possibility that teenagers that start smoking pot might be seen as drug users and the peer pressure that goes with that. The argument is that after a while the cannibus will no longer be enough and they will try and find a better high with harder drugs.

One person says that they started smoking cannabis at school at the age of twelve ‘It was just to look cool and get in with the boys in the popular group, before I knew it we were bunking off school to smoke and I was spending my pocket money and any money I could get hold of to get stoned. I didn’t concentrate at school and ended up failing my exams as I was hardly there. When I turned 16 I was starting sell cannibus to my friends to pay for my habbit and this made me become involved with a much older group of kids and led to me starting to take harder drugs. To be jailed for three times by the time I was twenty five did not help because I just carried on taking harder drugs every time inside. My one wish is that I never started smoking cannibus since it caused me to have a record wich makes me have no prospect of any job so I just carry on dealing to get my next high.

Smoking cannabis at an early age seems to be damaging, a lot of young people are getting hooked and then chasing that first buzz, whether it be because they have opened that ‘gateway’ or become involved with similar people or affected by peer pressure. A big percentage of these kids never stop after that first smoke and just carries on to the harder drugs.

This article has been published in the publics interest by Sensible Seeds. It in no way represents the views of the company. Sensible Seeds have fantastic prices on Cheese, AK47, and White Widow feminised cannabis seeds.

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