Just south of the Portland, Oregon, metro area is a town called Molalla. Like most rural areas in Oregon, it is politically much more intolerant of cannabis than the liberal confines of Multnomah County.

An Oregon NORML member snapped this pic while driving on US Hwy 99E.  In case it’s unreadable (click pic for larger version) the message on this billboard from the Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime says:

MARIJUANA- A Gateway Drug to METH

This message is accompanied by a picture of a man smoking a joint on the left, and the now infamous Oregonian picture of the pock-marked female meth addict.  Then the message continues by asking people to call the county sheriff’s office anonymous tip line.

We’re not against community organizations who in good faith try to relieve their neighborhoods of crime.  It’s just sad that they’re trying to reduce the harm from hard drugs by lying about cannabis.  Marijuana is not a gateway to meth or any other drug, any moreso than coffee, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.  The gateway theory has been debunked by many independent organizations and even by our own drug-hating government:

University of Pittsburgh 2006:

Researchers found that adolescents who used marijuana prior to using other drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, were no more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder than other subjects in the study.

RAND Corp Study 2002: 

“While the gateway theory has enjoyed popular acceptance, scientists have always had their doubts,” said lead researcher Andrew Morral, associate director of RAND’s Public Safety and Justice unit.  “Our study shows that these doubts are justified.”

Institute of Medicine 1999: 

“There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.  

“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 fact, the American Medical Association claims that if there is such a “gateway” effect, it’s alcohol and tobacco that are the “gateway”.  From the Journal of the American Medical Association:

“…early regular use of tobacco and alcohol emerged as the 2 factors most consistently associated with later illicit drug use and abuse/dependence.”

I could keep link-farming all of the studies from Canada, Australia, Europe, and the World Health Organization that declare the marijuana gateway theory to be bullshit, but you can easily find that for yourself at DrugWarFacts.org.

My biggest problem with the billboard isn’t the lie.  It’s that you and I paid for it.

That’s right, that billboard on the outskirts of my hometown, like many probably displayed around your hometown, are funded by grants from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.  In 1997 the Drug Free Communities Act was signed by President Clinton.  Grants are given to local community anti-drug organizations, like the “Molalla Coalition Against Drug Crime”.  Last year, ONDCP gave out $74 million in grants to 736 of these orgs around the country.

I called the contact name for the Molalla grant (5 SP011449-04) to try to find out how much the billboard cost and the amount of the federal grant, but she wasn’t very interested in speaking to me once I told her I was a journalist doing a story on government anti-drug grants.  I hadn’t even gotten to the point of telling her I was from NORML before she was hanging up.  But if we just take a simple average, it’s about $100,000 per organization.

I also looked up one of the leading (read: expensive) rehab centers in Oregon, Serenity Lane, and found out that a 28-day intensive inpatient drug rehab service costs $11,900.  So, then, with that average grant of $100,000, the average “drug-free” community could pay for eight meth addicts to get drug rehab.  The entire $74 million would treat 6,218 meth addicts, or just over 1% of the entire monthly meth-using population of the US (about 529,000 meth addicts).

Or they could blow it all on a marijuana gateway drug lie on a billboard.  (Hey, if marijuana use is such a “gateway”, how come there are 14 million monthly stoners but only half a million monthly tweekers?  Looks like only 1 out of 28 stoners found their way through the gate!)