Florida, Ohio Tracker
Florida released another week of data which is reflected in the tracker. Florida saw a 3% decline in THC Sales, a 1% decline in CBD Sales, and a 3% increase in Flower Sales for the week. Liberty Health Sciences added two new locations to the state. Qualified patients continue to increase with a 1.12% increase in the week.
Ohio released another week of data which is reflected in the tracker. The state saw a 16.33% gain WoW and a 119.23% gain YoY to $5.7 in medical sales the week of 3/20/21. We have also added the number of dispensaries by ticker to our tracker.
Is Marijuana really a gateway drug?
Marijuana has been regarded as the main gateway drug for decades. Taught in most classrooms across America, weed is considered the drug that leads to hard drug use. But is this actually true?
In the survey shown above, the American Addiction Center canvassed thousands of American's by asking what their first drug used was. From the survey, we can see that Alcohol and Tobacco had the highest responses with 71.7% of votes. Marijuana came at third with only 14.5% of votes. From the study, marijuana has the highest usage as the second substance one uses most likely used after using either alcohol or tobacco. Although we cannot tell after which specific gateway was any of the hard drugs used, we can tell one thing: alcohol and tobacco are far more used as an individual’s first substance and likely lead to a further drug at a much higher rate than marijuana. On top of this, alcohol and tobacco lead to exponentially more deaths than marijuana. Alcohol is responsible for about 100,000 deaths, and tobacco is responsible for over 450,000 each year in the United States. It is virtually impossible to overdose on marijuana. The main cause of mortality with marijuana is while driving under the influence of it. However, the same concerns are present with alcohol along overdose.
Since the Reagan era and America's war on drugs, Americans have been engrained to think that marijuana is a gateway drug in the same category as heroin or cocaine. This deep-seated perception must be altered by analyzing these cold hard facts.
