under “natural” conditions. Therefore, there may be a greater chance to discover actionable mechanisms when nonspecific liability, shared in common between risks for addiction to specific drugs, is addressed. Such interventions, channeling ontogenesis of the CLA phenotype away from the threshold, would target the entire range of its manifestations, including those unrelated to drugs directly. Whereas the “gateway hypothesis” assumes the progression related to, if not caused by, a “gateway” drug, with the consequent prevention and policy implications targeting drug use as such, the CLA theory focuses on the etiologic processes at all levels of biological organization that result in drug abuse and addictive behavior.
