Marijuana Use To The Gateway Theory Essay

In 2006, Jeffrey M. Lessem, Christian J. Hopfer, Brett C. Haberstick, David Timberlake, Marissa A. Ehringer, Andrew Smolen, and John K. Hewitt released their study Relationship Between Adolescent Marijuana Use and Young Adult Illicit Drug Use examining a number of components of the gateway theory as it applies to marijuana use and its effect on progression toward use of other illicit drugs. In order for researchers to relate marijuana use to the gateway theory, they examined (1) whether adolescent marijuana use predicts young adult drug use, (2) whether this association persists when controlling for similar family background, (3) whether common genetic or environmental factors contribute to the association (Lessem, Hopfer, Haberstick, Timberlake,
Harder, Andrew R. Morral and Jeremy Arkes to determine whether marijuana use predicts later development of depression after accounting for differences between users and non-users of marijuana (Harder, Morral & Arkes, 2006). Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1979 was analyzed for the study which consisted of a nationally representative longitudinal survey that was administered every year between 1979 and 1994 and then every two years through 2002. Researchers used a sample size of 8,759 adults interviewed in 1994 to measure past-year marijuana use and current depression. Participants were asked about the frequency and extent they use marijuana followed by their mood within the past seven days. Mood was assessed with a questionnaire consisting of 20 questions on depressive and non-depressive symptoms within the past week. The answers were on a scale from 0 to 3, where 0 indicated rarely or none of the time (less than 1 day) and 3 indicated most or all of the time (5–7 days) (Harder et al., 2006). Additionally, individual's propensity to use marijuana was calculated using over 50 baseline