Does cannabis onset trigger cocaine onset? A case-crossover approach
MEGAN S. O’BRIEN, LEAH ANDREWS COMMENT, KUNG YEE LIANG & JAMES C. ANTHONY
International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research
Int. J. Methods Psychiatr. Res. (2012)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/mpr.359
Is there something about occasions of “rst cannabis use
that trigger onset of “rst cocaine use? Perhaps starting to
smoke cannabis promotes a more rapid contact with
cocaine users and dealers in interpersonal or social developmental
sequences that involve mixing of the cannabis and
cocaine markets (O’Donnell and Clayton, 1982). Development
of these sequences from “rst use of legal drugs
(alcohol, tobacco) toward use of cannabis (marijuana) and
onward toward drugs like cocaine and heroin sometimes
has been called a “stepping-stone” or “gateway” process,
with the “steppingstone” idea cast as somewhat more
deterministic than the more probabilistic “gateway” idea
(Anthony, 2002; Kandel, 1975;Morral et al., 2002;O’Donnell
and Clayton, 1982).
