Are we for complete legalisation?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10520567

Do you mean that of the 61 admissions, 19 of them were actually readmissions?

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…

]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:19:01 +1200 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-mo-indexing/?p=57069#post57069 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-mo-indexing/?p=57069#post57069 "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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:15:41 +1200 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-mo-indexing/?p=57067#post57067 https://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-mo-indexing/?p=57067#post57067

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…

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…

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…

kind of speaks for itself
http://stuff.co.nz/4605397a11.html

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…

Gee also co-authored a fairly reasoned opinion piece that concluded thus…

And you won't find any in the air when you fly these days.

A ban of sorts – Bart vs Principle Skinner episode comes…

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 ...

I wonder what percentage of Dr…

And, as you note, he did actually commission research, rather than simply reacting, which has pretty…

Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence.

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…

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.

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....

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?…

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…

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

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.

Anderton and Dean offer the same failled prohibitionist "solution" to drug taking.

Perhaps National will…

Drug survey shows NZ slipping into 'world's gutters' – expert

But at least we're happy ...

15th in the world (eight places above Australia!) according to the latest University of Michigan study of global happiness.

Zimbabwe is the least happy country in the world.

Cause for optimism: Northern Ireland is…

A single twenty-something might be earning less than the average wage and still have a high disposable income

And that goes double for students, most of whom are living on under $15k a year and still have a reasonable amount of disposable income, by dint of flatting in large groups.…

I must have missed what they're measuring.

Me too...having spent much time in areas in places like Jawa Tengah where families live in one room with a dirt floor, where 60% have no access to clean running water and although the filthy stream running down next to your road floods…

When the data is dealt with as a whole, you weight it so your oversampling doesn't distort your picture of 'NZ as a whole'.

yeah, that's what I tried to write in a rather glib way.

Having just checked our stuff, what you do is weight the over-sampled sub-populations with…

Thus the NZDep index can be quite useful if you're comparing families from two different suburbs, but when you compare that to people with very different needs, some apparent anomalies arise.

Excellent point Tom.

You see a similar "ghetto" in the Auckland CBD, especially along the Nelson-Hobson ridge, where there…

ODT and NZ Herald. Yup, no great surprise. One pretending to be a big city paper, when it's not. The other seemingly doing the reverse.

They're both the same NZPA story, which is just a rewrite of Sabin's press release. Welcome to modern news reporting.

Parts of Riccarton are at 7 & 9, sure. Bryndwr 2 ,Fendalton 3 & Deans Bush 1, OK, but Mona Vale 4?
Mona Vale is populated by palaces and is rated the same as Burnham Military Camp?

I must have missed what they're measuring.

Why would you over-sample and then weight the results as well?

I'm no stats person, but I'd imagine you oversample (say) Maori, so that if you take out the Maori data and talk about it by itself, you have meaningful numbers – ie, not 10 people.

When the data is…

Interesting to see that Ponsonby still has a pocket of "most deprived". Deprived of "what"? This season's Issey Miyake?

One problem with NZDep is that it makes some assumptions about "deprivation" that may apply for the bulk of mainstream suburban NZ, but don't work well for truly urban lifestyles. Lack…

However, the methodology seems solid…

The only time I've ended up in the gutter is when I drank too much.

Well that's just good citizenship. A decent rain will wash that away, whereas someone's doorstep, it stays there for weeks.

I spoke too soon...

ODT and NZ Herald. Yup, no great surprise. One pretending to…

Whatever people think of Anderton, he does listen to evidence.

Maybe with drugs but not with fisheries.

You hope... The data may have been weighted at that stage, or they may have done the weighting themselves, I wouldn't be prepared to put money on it though

Wait? What are they…

The ethnic breakdown of deprivation is also intersting, with an under-representation of European and Other groups and an over-representation of Maori and Pacific people in the most deprived deciles. And it means something – life expectancy reduces / mortality rates increase with increasing deprivation (and then independent of deprivation mortality rates are higher than for non-Maori) – that is there is a socioeconomic gradient in mortality.

In these maps they seem to have gone for quintiles rather than deciles, so the red parts are areas that are the most deprived 20% of the country and the pale pink parts are areas that are the least deprived 20% of the country. But it is, of course, relative. So it's not like the red parts get redder and pale pink parts become paler as inequality grows. Yet socioeconomic inequality increased over the 80's and 90's and so did inequalities in mortality. The late 90's and early 2000's saw a slowing of the increase in relative inequality. Let's hope that's a trend that continues.

according to my on-tap stats guru, that would be a fairly fundamental mistake. i.e one you'd not find among decent analysts

Yup. Now for bonus points, do you think you can find a statistical correlation between newspaper stories about studies and fundamental mistakes?

What kind of carrot/stick/magic wand would be…

Drug survey shows NZ slipping into 'world's gutters' – expert
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10519516

(how do you measure the socio-economic status of Mechanics Bay, where no one lives?)

I would consider Mechanics Bay to be the triangle of land between Beach Road, The Strand and the harbour, and there are heaps of new apartments and townhouses there.

Yeah.

The only time I've ended up in the gutter is when I drank too much.

It's the same for almost every one else I know.

"New Zealand ranking second only to the United States for cannabis use provides further evidence that our country is descending into the world's gutters," Mr Sabin said.

And you solution, Mr Sabin, is to copy USA's drug policy?
http://methcon.co.nz/press/28may08.pdf

You hope... The data may have been weighted at that stage, or they may have done the weighting themselves, I wouldn't be prepared to put money on it though

according to my on-tap stats guru, that would be a fairly fundamental mistake. i.e one you'd not find among decent analysts.…

Which is coincidentally right next to APNs offices. If they sent their people across the road...

No, that *was* New Zealand Magazines, but they've been in the main APN building in town for about two years now. What used to be the foyer is now the excellent Richmond Road Cafe.…

No, they'd have re-weighted the data.

You hope. The Mental Health Survey says they did weighting in their methodology section, but as for the substance portion, presumably they just lifted that section tor the WHO report.

The data may have been weighted at that stage, or they may have done…

Sez Brown, with none o' them fancy degree things at all ...

don't fret. checked with a stats guy here at work, and he says oversampling is good as long as it's handled correctly

I'd have to look again, but i think that was a retail strip.

It's that block or two between Richmond Rd (beside the Foodtown) and Trinity St.

But as a twentysomething friend of a friend said: "I'm here for the five quid Es!"

Should have gone to Chatham for them......

Then again, I wonder if they considered that fact that an OE is commonplace, and that cocaine is readily available in the primary OE destination – London. So the 4% is not so much a measure of NZ, but more a measure of the narcotic lollyshop that is London.

I…

Reading the news, a person could be forgiven for thinking that New Zealand had the world's second-highest rate of cocaine use.

There are times when reading the news makes it all too plausible that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who've been on the nose…

They deliberately oversampled Maori and Pacific populations in the Te Rau Hinengaro survey, which makes the overall sample large.

can we have a please explain?

a large sample size is de rigeuer. do you mean that they overlaid some stats to inflate impacts?

No, they'd have re-weighted the data. They…

Yeah, I saw the cocaine use and thought "What?!?! I don't think so..." but never let the facts get in the way of a good headline.

Then again, I wonder if they considered that fact that an OE is commonplace, and that cocaine is readily available in the primary OE…

Interesting to see that Ponsonby still has a pocket of "most deprived". Deprived of "what"? This season's Issey Miyake?

I'd have to look again, but i think that was a retail strip. There are evidently some quirks where it comes to places where people don't actually live.

They deliberately oversampled Maori and Pacific populations in the Te Rau Hinengaro survey, which makes the overall sample large.

can we have a please explain?

a large sample size is de rigeuer. do you mean that they overlaid some stats to inflate impacts?

Another headline for a report on the same data might read: "1 in 25 NZers try cocaine at some point in lifetime."

To which my reaction would be, "Meh".

same.

i'd love to see if there is a correlation between anti-drug hysteria and drug consumption.

anecdotal evidence would suggest, "yes".…

Deprived of "what"? This season's Issey Miyake?

There are still pockets of poverty there. Small, but real.

I'm disappointed that this current index is all in red. I found the red/green of the last one much easier to understand. I can see why they've changed – red/green would be a…

Did you know that New Zealand also has the world's highest instance of meaningless statistics???

Show me the figures to support that!

The New Zealand study included in this report is "Te Rau Hinengaro: The New Zealand Mental Health Survey". The large sample size probably reflects the fact…

It's political correctness gone magic!

Actually, that's a really neat way of characterising it.

It strikes me as an extremely well-documented project that is very sensitive to its impact. Neat. (It's political correctness gone magic!)

To which my reaction would be, "Meh".

But this kind of b/s makes me tempted to go out on a Hunter S. Thompson style binge, and try…

Looking forward to looking through the new NZDep stuff – should be fascinating (It's the sociologist in me)