Nogueira, Felipe. “Where Drug Myths Die: An Interview with Carl Hart.” ebscohost.com. EBSCOhost, 01 June 2015. Web. 19 July 2015.
The article I found online is an interview between Felipe Nogueira & Carl Hart: an associate professor of Psychiatry & Psychology at Columbia University. He works in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute as a research scientist & is a member of the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and on the board of directors of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Drug Policy Alliance.
Dr. Hart believes that drug users actually have rational behavior & are able to choose which drugs appeal to them. He is posed with many questions & provides his feedback on some of marijuana’s most controversial aspects. He says that marijuana is not a gateway drug, but however many cocaine & heroin users did start off smoking marijuana. His research has shown that the majority of marijuana users don’t go on to smoke other drugs and uses the example of “The last 3 presidents smoked marijuana before taking office, therefore marijuana is a gateway drug to the White House” to show the irrational silly myth of marijuana being a “gateway”. With that statement he is saying that just because that they may have been involved with marijuana in the past, doesn’t mean that it is the drug itself that influences the mindset, but the behavior and mentality of the user. He says those who use harder drugs have been affiliated with petty crimes in the past & those have a slight influence on their drug behavior.
Dr. Hart says that “drug addiction is behavior that disrupts your physiological functions, your job, your family life, and these behavioral disruptions have to occur on multiple occasions”. He backs up his claim by saying that just because you have 1 disruption in the important aspects of your life, doesn’t make one an addict. Addiction takes time & most statements regarding “marijuana addiction” is just simple hyperbole being shout out by the Ignorant.
When it comes to statistics, marijuana actually has the lowest addiction rate of any mind-altering drug with 10% of users being addicted. This is a way better stat than those who consume cigarettes: 33%, heroin: 25%, cocaine: 20%, and alcohol: 15%. Although the alcohol addiction rate is quite low, he says it’s the most harmful when it comes to being addicted because there have been cases where many have died from alcohol withdrawal, where a withdrawal for marijuana doesn’t even exist. He says that the “killing of the brain cells” myth may be true, but it rarely happens as it requires the user to consume 20-50 times the “normal” amount a human would use.
Overall this resource is very valuable into the debate about marijuana usage on the brain & whether it’s a gateway or not. It’s always more relieving when a doctor provides his insight based on research & studies he has been conducting in the past. This provides a more sophisticated & less bias perspective on the myths. Other people in the class might find this interview helpful because the doctor is affiliated with many drug-based groups & sees the evidence first hand through his experiments. This interview should serve as an insight about what the answers are over the most popular myths regarding marijuana.
I found this article very insightful. There are many myths that marijuana is a gateway drug, but this article clarified the myth with facts. The statement that marijuana is not a gateway drug, but something people used before they started harder drugs is one that believe is true. I love the joking reference about the last three presidents. It was pretty funny.