Nicotine, the gateway drug
Jun. 3rd, 2005 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietSo, after years of cannabis legalisation campaigners pointing out that "no one says that smoking cigarettes leads to harder drugs", now they are doing.
My immediate reaction to that was to question where the causation is here. Is it really that starting smoking too early leads to the misuse of other drugs later on; or is it that those most likely to start smoking early are also those most likely to later abuse other drugs - that the two things share common explanatory factors, rather than one explaining the other? My own feeling (although I would like to see figures on this) is that the latter is more likely. And this is important, of course, because it affects how the problems should be tackled (I note that I don't necessarily see *use* of drugs/alcohol as a problem; but *abuse* certainly is). Just getting these kids to quit smoking isn't going to help if the reasons they started smoking in the first place, the reasons which are going to make them more likely to abuse other drugs, are still there.
Of course, this *is* a newspaper report, and thus it is entirely possible that the doctors in question were saying something much more like that than like what the journalist appears to be reporting them as saying.
And it's also, of course, an indication of the increasing disapproval of smoking. Ten years ago, when I was 17, I can't imagine this sort of thing being taken all that seriously, somehow - certainly banning smoking in public places over here would have seemed peculiar in the extreme (I found it very odd, 6 years ago, being in California and not being able to smoke in clubs/bars, and certainly didn't think it likely at the time that this would spread). My own opinion has changed as well, mind - at that time I felt that smokiness was just *part* of pubs and clubs, and to be dealt with; now I'll be quite happy to see it go (& I thought that even before I stopped smoking). Although it will be a bit of a trial in certain sorts of clubs, where I tend to be in a state where nicotine is *really nice*... ;-) Getting old, though.
My immediate reaction to that was to question where the causation is here. Is it really that starting smoking too early leads to the misuse of other drugs later on; or is it that those most likely to start smoking early are also those most likely to later abuse other drugs - that the two things share common explanatory factors, rather than one explaining the other? My own feeling (although I would like to see figures on this) is that the latter is more likely. And this is important, of course, because it affects how the problems should be tackled (I note that I don't necessarily see *use* of drugs/alcohol as a problem; but *abuse* certainly is). Just getting these kids to quit smoking isn't going to help if the reasons they started smoking in the first place, the reasons which are going to make them more likely to abuse other drugs, are still there.
Of course, this *is* a newspaper report, and thus it is entirely possible that the doctors in question were saying something much more like that than like what the journalist appears to be reporting them as saying.
And it's also, of course, an indication of the increasing disapproval of smoking. Ten years ago, when I was 17, I can't imagine this sort of thing being taken all that seriously, somehow - certainly banning smoking in public places over here would have seemed peculiar in the extreme (I found it very odd, 6 years ago, being in California and not being able to smoke in clubs/bars, and certainly didn't think it likely at the time that this would spread). My own opinion has changed as well, mind - at that time I felt that smokiness was just *part* of pubs and clubs, and to be dealt with; now I'll be quite happy to see it go (& I thought that even before I stopped smoking). Although it will be a bit of a trial in certain sorts of clubs, where I tend to be in a state where nicotine is *really nice*... ;-) Getting old, though.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-04 04:33 am (UTC)