* Even Mr. Califano's own organization, the National Center of
Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), admits in its 1994 report on
"gateway drugs" that a biomedical or causal relationship has not been
established. Many unbiased experts believe that the most likely
relationship between the use of marijuana and harder drugs is a
person's propensity for risk-taking, which may even be exacerbated by
the illicit market in marijuana, created by prohibition, which
routinely exposes children and adults to harder drugs.

In its landmark March 1999 report of marijuana's health effects, the
Institute of Medicine agreed: There is no evidence that marijuana
serves as a stepping stone on the basis of its particular drug effect.
In 1998, the World Health Organization stated emphatically that the
gateway theory between adolescent marijuana use and heroin use is the
least likely of all hypotheses.

Chad Thevenot
Washington