They explain that this term is used to refer to the risk a person who smokes marijuana or cannabis has of moving on to more powerful drugs.

For years, politicians, parents and religious leaders have used this justification to prevent the recreational drug from being introduced on the market, and officially regulated.

But now it would appear that their main argument is being brought into question. This was the only thing that made marijuana worst than cigarettes and alcohol in the eyes of many.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that marijuana is less addictive than either one of the two legal drugs cited above. Researchers and drug users alike came to this conclusion.

In a previous investigation conducted on illicit substance users, many of those “in the know” rated marijuana as having a lower intoxication risk that tobacco and alcohol. Scientific studies determined the same thing,.

According to the new investigation, it would appear that teens who smoke marijuana are significantly influenced by a variety of other factors, in their pursuit of more powerful drugs.

These factors include stress and employment status, the UNH team argues. Race and ethnicity were found to be the most accurate factors in predicting drug use, and not whether or not people smoked pot.

“In light of these findings, we urge US drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the ‘drug problem’,” say UNH sociology professors Karen Van Gundy and Cesar Rebellon.

Their new article, entitled “A Life-course Perspective on the ‘Gateway Hypothesis,” appears in the September issue of the esteemed scientific Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

“While marijuana use may serve as a gateway to other illicit drug use in adolescence, our results indicate that the effect may be short-lived, subsiding by age 21,” the experts write.

“Interestingly, age emerges as a protective status above and beyond the other life statuses and conditions considered here,” they add in the journal entry.

“We find that respondents ‘age out’ of marijuana’s gateway effect regardless of early teen stress exposure or education, work, or family statuses,” the authors conclude.

This investigation tracked about 1,286 young adults, all of whom attended Miami-Dade public schools in the 1990s

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Health Science UK