Hard News: Mo' Indexing
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global happiness is rising at the same time as global drug consumption
Not to mention global warming.
YOU do the (ill-conceived and poorly constructed) math -
Having just checked our stuff, what you do is weight the over-sampled sub-populations with the inverse of the probability of their selection.
and again in non-math-geek english... this is what i learned today.
you sample more of some groups ("over-sample") to ensure you get a decent and comparable number of responses.
there are methods to ensure that you don't skew the data when comparing groups, as hadyn indicates. in plain english you could, for example, look at the percentage of a variable within groups.
</feels very smug for having worked out "maff">
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find the application of the word deprived to folks that don't have a car or access to a phone or are forced to live on a benefit, as relative as it might be, rather bizarre.
are you suggesting my big-screen tv, high-meat diet, and flush toilet is over-consumption or greedy?
because those, mr. griggs, are fighting words.
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are you suggesting my big-screen tv, high-meat diet, and flush toilet is over-consumption or greedy?
Just not deprived, surely Che - btw, we'll be monitoring you closely to ensure you don't buy your kids ipods AND get WFF.
Verrrry closely....
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Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence.
He didn't seem too interested in the evidence on BZP when he came on my show on George FM. I would even go so far as to say 'closed-minded', even.
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Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence.
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Maybe with drugs but not with fisheries.__
Anderton makes a big show of looking at the evidence but it definately wasn't quite there for outlawing BZP. Though he was responsible for commissioning the research - which I believe has never been properly peer-reviewed - our joke of an EACD, weighted for self-interest with customs and police, rubber-stamped it.
A real substance use expert (a Chch Professor) on the committee didn't even bother to attend the 30 November meeting where the ban was announced. Instead he was at an addiction seminar I attended in Chch that day, where an overview of the flimsy 'evidence' was presented to the 60+ attendees who work in the field.
Dr Gee, of Chch Hospital, who had made so much 'ban BZP' noise in the media was also there. He sat through the morning sessions on other topics, during which one of the presenters did a useful exercise: various terrible outcomes caused by an ingested substance were described, then a show-hands requested on whether it should be banned. Well over 80% of the audience obliged and had the grace to look quite embarrassed when he informed them they'd just voted to ban peanuts. Dr Gee didn't say anything when the BZP 'evidence' was described, then left.
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Fair enough Paula: but do bear in mind that Anderton did change his mind over the needle exchange programme and did preside over the creation of Schedule 4 for BZP in the first place.
And, as you note, he did actually commission research, rather than simply reacting, which has pretty much been the rule in the past, and is certainly going to be if Dean gets the gig.
And I confess, I had a little bit of sympathy over the BZP ban. I went in to Christchurch Hospital ED to interview Gee, and (a) was reminded what the reality of ED life was really like, and (b) was further reminded how extreme and abusive the use of BZP was by a hard core of people in Christchurch. I do think Gee was seeing a different profile than anyone else in the country, which goes some way to explaining his view.
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Well there must be something up with christchurch people because I believe an emergency ward doctor in Wellington stated it was extremely rare to have admissions for Bzp, rather its all about the booze if there was a drug involved in an admission .
I wonder what percentage of Dr Gee’s admissions were for Bzp ………… 1% ?, or less ?.
…………………… and speaking of bzp whatever happened to those two girls in Auckland who required medical treatment recently in a supposed bzp overdose/reaction?.
The police were very quick to claim bzp is dangerous and this ( two girls needing a ambulance ) is why it was banned. That was not the first time they had pushed for it to be banned in our media on the basis of a dodgy scenario ……………………
We’ve never heard of any blood tests/results from these girls but I’d bet that they took gbh/fantasy.
Anyway theres a lot of ignorance and dishonesty when it comes to trying to have a rational discussion on drugs in our society
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are you suggesting my big-screen tv, high-meat diet, and flush toilet is over-consumption or greedy?
I think it's more that you actually have the big screen TV and indoor BBQ in your toilet that has us worried ...
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" Well over 80% of the audience obliged and had the grace to look quite embarrassed when he informed them they'd just voted to ban peanuts."
And you won't find any in the air when you fly these days.
A ban of sorts - Bart vs Principle Skinner episode comes to mind.
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You speak the truth Russell, it was curious that so many Chch people had trouble with BZP, unlike other most centres. I have my own theory about why that happened. It involves the phrase 'quality control' and some pretty scary Chch people. Class D wasn't Anderton's idea, though he backed it while he commissioned that research. Only a complete fool would fiddle with the needle exchange.
Yes! I had occasion to fly recently and read the smallprint 'no peanuts' in our processed food.
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Russell, there is nothing in New Zealand to match the way you and the contributors here are intelligently discussing this issue in a factual and sane manner. In the wider context of drug debate, worldwide other people are still trying to have this discussion, but its very rarely reported here by mainstream media. For example, you won't see these :
What a UK police Chief Constable has to say, reported today . . .
"In an age of cost-benefit analysis... there is no appetite for solutions that have no visible return and no patience for any which will not bear immediate political fruit."And a Stanford & Notre Dame University economist . . .
We must urgently explore options that enlist market forces rather than support futile attempts to outlaw them.Heres a rather small-time Sabin-esque ex doorman
He said: “It’s a sad thing to say but schools are considering the use of dogs like Solo because they have drug problems. We go round schools routinely once a month and support what the headteacher wants to do. With that information we can educate parents and say this is a good school.”Its a sad thing to say but mainstream media are a very large part of the problem. Kudos to you all here.
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The thing I found most perplexing about Gee's original BZP work was an overlooked aspect to the results. They had 61 people admitted over 5 months, but there were 19 readmissions on a separate occasion in that time period.
Gee also co-authored a fairly reasoned opinion piece that concluded thus "If a legal market for psychoactive drugs is established in New Zealand, and such compounds are to be let out of ‘Pandora’s box’, a responsible approach must be applied prior to their release. In particular, safety (rather than apparent lack of toxicity) must be proven; with the onus to provide scientifically robust evidence
placed on the suppliers of these substances. And vigorous standards must be applied and enforced regarding the manufacture, packaging and sale of these substances; and
effective ongoing national post-marketing surveillance must be established." (Gee & Fountain, NZMJ, 2007). -
Oh yeah, one other thing. I made this table for my select committee submission. Among other things, I made some suggestions along the lines of Gee & Fountain above, and acknowledged that we don't know the long term harms of BZP, but I think this table should provide an interesting counterpoint.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/limegreenz/bzptable2.gifI probably should have just linked to a pdf of my submission, but I've done this now....
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Do you mean that of the 61 admissions, 19 of them were actually readmissions?
If so that was how spinners in the UK presented their numbers for hospital psychosis admissions, but on an online discussion somewhere I read their numbers included multiple readmissions. However the Keele University report recently found incidence of UK psychosis had decreased. That report is still unpublished though, Gordon Brown is in Downing St nesting on it :) -
Warning: some boring analysis of the stats follows:
But our cumulative lifetime incidence of 4.3% for cocaine is not only far behind the US (16.2%), but well behind the rate for countries not included in the WHO survey, but for which good data exist. Britain, for example, and Italy and Spain.
But Italy and Spain are in the WHO survey, with significantly different numbers for lifetime cocaine use to the ones in the European data you linked to (For Spain, 7% vs 4.1% in the WHO data). So clearly there's a methodological difference between the two surveys. The only one I can see is the age ranges (15-64 for the European study, 18+ for the WHO one, for the Spanish data).
Assuming there are no other significant differences in the sample group, that suggests that in Spain the 15-18yo group makes a surprisingly large difference to the statistics for cocaine use.
Since the NZ data is for 16+ rather than the 18+ (or more) used in all the other national studies, and the 15-18 group significantly distorts the Spanish figures, one could easily conclude that the NZ data cannot be compared with any of the other countries.
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61:6
kind of speaks for itself
http://stuff.co.nz/4605397a11.html -
All bets are off, of course, under a National government. Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence. I don't think the same can be said of National's would-be drug tsar, Jacqui Dean.
Russell: After the rather passive-agressive attack on your integrity in the previous thread on this subject, I've got to say you're being very generous indeed. Anderton does, all too often, listen to evidence that tells him what he wants to hear. And if you don't, you're in for a very torrid time indeed.
And while I don't actually know Jacqi well (she came on the scene well after my more activist phase), you might do a little better if you don't make too many assumptions. To be honest, I think there's a lot of shit that gets talked about drugs on all sides of the political spectrum -- and while that's depressing, I guess we shouldn't be in the least surprised. Guess all you can do is keep waving around the big stick of reality-based, rational policy argument and hope it connects with enough heads to do some good.
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And while I don't actually know Jacqi well (she came on the scene well after my more activist phase), you might do a little better if you don't make too many assumptions.
But it's not really a matter of making assumptions. Her party pill scare campaign, the press releases inevitably referring to BZP as "a cattle drench product", the general ban-first-ask-questions-later philosophy (she described salvia as "another drug which is infiltrating towns up and down the country", which is just silly), falling for the dihydrogen monoxide hoax ... she's clearly not so much into evidence.
And yes, Anderton was a bit of a moral thug in that email, but I'm quite sure Dean would be worse.
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And yes, Anderton was a bit of a moral thug in that email, but I'm quite sure Dean would be worse.
You may well be right, but I'm going to be optimistic (you in the back, don't make me come down there...) and hope the small, persistent voice of reason is going to lower the temperature on all sides. I certainly don't think anyone makes good decisions off bad - or partial - data, and the only way you're going to turn anyone around to to keep buggering on.
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"the general ban-first-ask-questions-later philosophy"
Ah that would be the precautionary principle.A reasonable response to new and more highly refined substances.
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<quote>Do you mean that of the 61 admissions, 19 of them were actually readmissions? <quote>
Nah there were 80 admissions, but only 61 patients, so it's only a third not learning from prior mistakes, rather than half. But you're pretty much onto it. Personally, I would think the re-admission rate should be headline material. -
maybe those 61 patients were the 61 police, overworked tired and addled.
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If I may be so bold as to ask what the general consensus is on the legalisation/regulation of drugs?
Are we for complete legalisation?
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