Alcohol, Tobacco Still Main Gateway Drugs for Adolescents

TEENAGERS July 1993

Use of at least one licit drug, alcohol or cigarettes, generally precedes use of other drugs, with crack cocaine usually the last drug used in the sequence of adolescent drug use, according to a recent study. The new study confirms observations first made in the 1970s, the authors said (Denise Kandel and Kazuo Yamaguchi, "From Beer To Crack: Developmental Patterns Of Drug Involvement," American Journal of Public Health, June 1993, Vol. 83, No. 6, pp. 851-855).