New Study Flips Everything We Know About Addiction Upside Down
Since the 1970s, countless experts and the US government have sold the public a simple explanation for drug addiction, now clinically called substance abuse disorder: the myth of the gateway drug. The gateway drug — usually cast as weed, alcohol, tobacco, or inhalants — refers to the theory that the earlier a kid starts using drugs, the more likely they are to get into the harder stuff later in life, like heroin or cocaine. Though the idea was pioneered as early as the 1930s, the policy term wa