White House drug czar calls marijuana a "gateway" drug, rallies against legalization 
White House Director of National Drug Control Policy Michael Botticelli. (Photo credit: Gabriella Demczuk/Getty Images)

White House officials continue spreading marijuana misinformation.

Michael Botticelli, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, reaffirmed the Obama administration’s opposition to state efforts at legalizing marijuana. His testimony happened before a House panel last week, as reported by GateHouse Media.

The House panel hearing was convened to examine state and federal responses to the heroin and opioid crisis. However, Botticelli took the opportunity to highlight an imaginary causal link between marijuana and opioid addiction.
Per GateHouse Media:
“I think the evidence is pretty clear that early use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana – often used together – significantly increases the probability that someone will develop a more significant addictive disorder later in their life,” he said. “Early substance use actually effects brain development and predisposes people for more significant vulnerabilities later in their life.”
The White House drug czar argued that marijuana use is way up among young people in America and accused the marijuana industry of “targeting our youth with things like funny cartoon characters.”

Botticelli made no mention of the long list of legal pharmaceutical drugs — many with dangerous side effects — that also advertise directly to consumers with cartoon characters.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Boston), who serves on the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and also opposes marijuana legalization, argued in support of the “gateway” theory during last week’s House panel as well.

Per GateHouse Media:
“While I don’t know if marijuana is a gateway drug to heroin, every single kid that I’m dealing with who is on opioids or on heroin started with marijuana. So there is a perfect match – 100 percent,” Lynch said. “So it deserves a cautionary note in terms of some of this marijuana legalization. I think we are buying ourselves a huge problem.”
The “gateway” theory, which assumes adolescents who use marijuana will go on to use harder drugs, has been debunked many times but continues to rear its head in nearly all major drug policy discussions to this day.

A 2010 TIME article dubbed it “the myth that will not die.”

A report from the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, explained the faulty logic behind the theory way back in 1999:
Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana — usually before they are of legal age.
In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a “gateway” drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, “gateway” to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.
Most people understand that correlation and causation are not the same thing, but this fact seems lost on many politicians arguing against marijuana reform.

Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, the White House’s official argument against legalizing marijuana still rests on the notion that legalizing and regulating pot will increase illicit drug use among young people.

Per the Office of National Drug Control Policy:
Confusing messages being presented by popular culture, media, proponents of “medical” marijuana, and political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana is harmless. This significantly diminishes efforts to keep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from substance use disorders.
The Administration steadfastly opposes legalization of marijuana and other drugs because legalization would increase the availability and use of illicit drugs, and pose significant health and safety risks to all Americans, particularly young people.