Pubdate: Tue, 17 May 2016
Source: Bundaberg News Mail (Australia)
Copyright: 2016 The Bundaberg Newspaper Company Pty Limited
Contact: http://www.news-mail.com.au/contact/feedback/
Website: http://www.news-mail.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/657
Author: Dieter Moeckel

NO GATEWAY?

MARIJUANA is no more a gateway drug to opiate abuse than drinking 
milk is a gateway to alcohol abuse.

"Nearly all people with substance abuse problems; most heroin users, 
initiated their drug use beginning with marijuana."

This is about as useful as revealing that all alcoholics at one time 
drank mothers' milk.

There is no proven connection between marijuana and heroin abuse nor 
is there any reliable evidence that "establishing cannabis as a third 
tranche legal drug, along with tobacco and alcohol, will increase 
drug abuse, including the expanding opioid and ice epidemic."

Rather the reverse is true - recent evidence reports that marijuana 
may be a successful treatment for heroin addiction.

More importantly, heroin (in pure, clean form does the body no 
physical harm) is being laced with synthetic prescription opioids 
leading to fatal overdose.

Overdose on heroin usually allows considerable time before death for 
medical intervention to take place.

Heroin laced with, say fentanyl, severely reduces the time period 
between overdose and death.

All this leads to the conclusion that a much more human approach to 
drug mitigation is for the government to legalise all drugs, and take 
all controls from criminal black market profiteers and provide pure, 
dose-specific alternatives.

The war on drugs has failed.

The illogical drug propaganda must cease. And the community needs to 
accept and convince government for a new humane, harm-minimisation approach.

A live addict is surely preferable to a dead addict.

DIETER MOECKEL Wonbah
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom