Examining of gateway theory in drugs addict patient

Abstract

Drug and substance abuse, including tobacco and alcohol, are a cause of deaths. The global demand for drugs has not been substantially reduced and so some challenges exist in the implementation of the drug control system, in the violations generated by drug trafficking of illicit drugs, in the fast evolving nature of new psychoactive substances, and those in national legislative measures, which may result in a violation of human rights. Throughout the world of narcotics trafficking, world heroin consumption (340 tons) and seizures represent an annual flow of 430-450 tons of heroin into the global heroin market. People experiment with drugs for many different reasons, and many of them first try drugs out of curiosity, to relax and have a good time, visibility from friends and peer encouragement, enhance athletic performance and activity, and/or to ease problems with prolonged stress, anxiety, or depression. They probably start from smoking to hard drugs, which cannot be controlled when addicted, which leads to drug abuse. The Gateway Hypothesis was first proposed by Denise Kandel in 1975 in her article Stages in Adolescent Involvement in Drug Use , which entails the idea of the logical sequence that users of hard drugs (cocaine and heroin) begin with licit substances (alcohol and tobacco) to marijuana and ends with harder illicit substances. This study was to examine the gateway drug theory in order to determine which drug (alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana) is the actual gateway that leads to additional substance use in patients. The cross-sectional studies were used and data were collected, in which the calculated numbers of the sample size were 440 cases. The questionnaires were supplied to drug addict patients at Princess Mother National Institute on Drug Abuse Treatment. The reliability of the values were calculated to be greater than 0.7. Data were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. P value < 0.05 is considered statistically significant. The results showed ages of between 18-56 years ;