Otago University's Professor Jim Mann

The fines for any outlets selling to minors should be substantive perhaps starting in the order of $100,000 per offence and a permanent cancellation of the license.

Or if you'd prefer to see a rapid change in societal attitudes. fine the parents – $100!

I really do think you’re drawing a long bow saying that the Smokefree policy has had no effect.

I didn’t mean to imply there was no effect Russell, simply the time wasted and the massive expense hasn’t made a significantly cost effective dent in the issue. Some things, such as…

but God does enjoy obliging people who say “X. will happen over my dead body”.

bloody god getting all the fun, sitting up there, watching our words, waiting till one of us foretells our death.…

With Marijuana being “illegal” it is…

Oh, is this the way they say The Future's meant to feel?
Or just twenty thousand people dancing in a field?

I suspect Garth may have cause to rethink a number of things when his time comes, and he is touched by His Noodly Appendage.

You said it, not me. :)

Was he ever a young man, or born a codger eternal?

Especially if the TPPA goes through and Pharmac is legally restrained from making even legal medicinal drugs – that a deteriorating geriatric might need – priced beyond reach...

That's one hell of a dangerous thing to wish for.

Must… resist… urge… to… be… mean-spirited. Thankfully, Jacinda Adern & Nikki Kaye’s tag-team fudge on marriage equality contained my rage. (And, FFS, Broadsides was the best column name they could come up with? Was 'Catfight' already taken?)…

Includes the lines:

the unborn child (euphemistically called a fetus)

And:

The easier you make it to get at forbidden fruit, the more people will want a taste.

So awesome.

"Paaaaaandemic! I got ya paaaandemic!"

Being surrounded by thousands of people celebrating madly when you're not feeling the same way can be the loneliest experience in the world. Wandering alone around a large outdoor venue in the dark in the middle of the night looking for your mates can…

In the early days of my Glasto experiences (early 80s onwards before they brought the police onsite) it was all pretty…

That was important not just for those enjoying drugs, I should add. It really helped the year my father had recently died and I was struggling with some of my own responses at the time. Forever grateful.

I recall my first Glastonbury, in the years before the police were allowed onsite, and getting through the gate to discover a kind of market lane for recreational drugs. The thing that still makes me laugh was the guy calling __Git yer…

I remember them doing a walkthrough for about half an hour and then zooming down to Motueka to deal with a boozy streetbrawl.

Definitely – and that was something that really struck me about the atmosphere at TheG. Everyone was kind to everyone else. The whole “be nice…

Your team's lovingly detailed attention to creating a safe and supportive environment really impressed me – especially compared with the Big Day Out's inconsiderate suckiness a mere few weeks later, which put me off their event for…

It also gives the peer group power the ability to actually intervene where that would work. Recognizing people in trouble isn't something that's just automatic.

beautiful

Precisely!

And it’s where, I think, Harm Reduction/Minimisation policies (like we used to have at The Gathering for example) work well – because they neither condone nor condemn drug…

Monkey see monkey do – research – "where monkeys are trained to develop serious drug addition"

http://www.prisonplanet.com/us-government-spends-millions-administering-street-drugs-to-monkeys-in-the-name-of-research.html…

It can be. My business partner is a total computer games addict (the highest number of PlayStation trophies in the country, by quite a large margin), but it doesn't stop him being a functional, happy, well adjusted member of society. But other people, myself included,…

That brings it to the individual at fault level, and you're on the defensive. Societies can be harmful to individual health or…

I see this as one of our society's biggest problems, actually. It warps everything. I don't want to live in a schadenfreude society (with the natural corollary freudenschade that goes with it). I want a freudenfreude/schadenschade society. Which could also…

Not a bad article and the few comments I read seemed less insane than usual ;-)

For some, others having fun seems to be a 'problem'.

I thought you were kidding for a minute there, then googled it. What the...? Is he some anti-drug crusader then? Or just into making money? The reformed are always the worst, aren't they?

http://www.spinner.com/2009/07/21/peter-hook-lucky-to-survive-drug-filled-career

Yeah this is where I have an issue with the "let's treat it as a health problem not a criminal problem..." line of thinking – to an extent. Let's…

Yet look how our pathetic system currently treats them. Prosecuting while not providing a legal alternative sounds awfully like some copyrighted entertainment products.

and itching for a six-shooter

Malt I'd Like to Drink

Genius

Fair enough — I don't know enough about how it works there to make an informed comment. But I sure hope Kiwis can do a lot of worthwhile things better than our American friends.

Apparently Hooky did the mix specially.

Such…

and

The accompanying analysis suggested this was to do with the breakdown in traditional French family patterns.

I think so. It seems to…

To be fair medical pot prescriptions in California must…

World's greatest collection of cardigans :-)

QFT. You know what a square I am (and being…

Those cost guesstimate should include what is likely to be…

The thing is, this is now a three-year nationwide operation involving many undercover officers — and they've come up with so little they're reduced to prosecuting…

As for GregO, he's basically a 1970s shop steward with a badge.

No, and as the election draws ever closer I’m sure we’re going to hear much from Greg O’Connor about how terribly under-resourced and disrespected police officers are. Well, with no due respect whatsoever, I’d suggest the Whangarei Police haven’t exactly…

If one is a straight-looking adult, and one wants to score drugs, it can also help to have a dodgy-looking dreadlocked mate along as a wingman to smooth the path.

Erm, so I've heard.....

I speculate that the change in drinking habits in Europe's youth and in our own could be tied to a rat park type analysis. The last time we had a…

I got wedged with a couple of dudes in a
Rock 'n' roll toilet
I'd rather just sit and imagine my food in a
Rock 'n' roll toilet

Look at the beautiful patterns that form on the wall
Stick out your finger to trace them just look at them…

The older the better.

(10) exploration of inner space (your own mind and consciousness)

Not to be undertaken alone if you value your sanity, especially if its not MDMA. Or at less have someone in the next room. Mrs Shulgin was very interesting on her ventures.

(11) spirituality – taking psychedelics in order to…

well ok, let's start with, "Why do teenagers binge drink?"
(1) self medication (already traumatised for some reason)
(2) want to feel less inhibited in social situations
(3) peer pressure
(4)…

I don't know. It may have something to do with the decrease in availability of…

http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?q=raising+legal+drinking+age&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5

Perhaps. But when I was 18, (some moons before you, O! best beloved), we could usually sneak into a pub or…

I am indeed saying (almost) that. As I said earlier, I'm not sure that the genie will go back in the bottle. Reversing a process…

there's several meters of links missing in that chain of reasoning. With all due respect, I think there's plenty of evidence that your hypothetical…

You seem to be saying that raising the age restriction will *not* have the opposite effect…

I am not in favour of 12 year olds drinking alcohol. I do think that abolishing age restrictions will result in more…

Chris Fowlie, the co-owner of the Hemp Store, which has sold synthetic cannabis products for 10 years, said he was concerned about the substances' availability.

"It's gone too far, especially with its availability in dairies ... Dairies are often by schools, and they…

No, I am not.

Do I think these drugs should be available to adults who want them?

Yes, I do.

I suppose…

Yes, we have developed quite the binge drinking culture in the last decade and a half, just not as a result of changes in liquor law or availability of the stuff. (And I didn’t mean to say that we were more virtuous back…

It seems things are different now, sadly:

Girls in Italy as young as 11 are using alcohol more and taking more risks…

When I grew up I didn't even know what the legal drinking age was in Italy – in fact I still don't.…

At the moment,…

I didn't say you did!

But it seemed to be a logical extension of your argument. The part where you said "the underage drinking comment was made to show that restricting availability is not restricting access or consumption."…

There are still restrictions on availability. You can only buy it at certain places if you're of a certain age, right.…

With all due respect to ER staff, they only see the people that turn up to ED. And by definition they only see the problems.…

We are in agreement on this.

I think the future of sensible non-prohibition approaches rests quite heavily on addressing that…

Stanford University Medical School researchers recently conducted a survey in which they found that point-of-sale tobacco advertising greatly influences teenagers’ desire and willingness to smoke. According to the…

Increasing availability by lowering the legal purchase age is widely reported by ED and other health sector specialists as having resulted in more harms to young drinkers, isn't it?

Are you saying the opposite doesn't…

More than one data point. I was recalling discussions hereabouts and in other media which cited various evidence about the effectiveness of restricting availability – especially through pricing – compared with other…

Do you dispute that removing age restrictions on the purchase of alcohol would create a greater problem? Would you seriously, knowing what…

It's not just me. In…

The underage drinking comment was made to show that restricting availability is not restricting access [ETA or consumption]. Or do you dispute that underage drinking is a problem?

I think that's what I said, yes. That's not the same thing as regarding one measure, i.e. restricting availability, as being the cause of evident reduction.

No, I'm not at all pissed off. But you made a pretty big claim in declaring…

This is what she says about The Rules of Drunkenness:

Our beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol are certainly…

I have no idea but I’d put money on it being more than get ripped on Kronic.

And are you suggesting allowing 12 year-olds to buy alcohol would not result in more drunk 12 year-olds?

No, that’s only your interpretation…

How many 12-14 year-olds do we see "regularly getting drunk"?

And are you suggesting allowing 12 year-olds to buy alcohol would not result in…

Please return your high horse to its stall.

I did not "propose a mere correlation" – I warned against mistaking correlation for cause, as Sacha had said "Again, does not…

No, but I don't attribute the drop-off to any one measure either. To state definitively that restricting access is having that effect would be to ignore all the other things that are going on in that…

And the Japanese are certainly no teetotallers either. The home of…

I'd be curious to know why. Is it that doing the drinking over a meal means there's less time to drink as much? Or are they just better behaved in general?

There’s a superb documentary called…

In my experience (I work in IT, after all) this is true – but I also often see ethnic Chinese co-workers who do drink, when exposed to the New Zealand work-function-drinking culture, completely fail to keep…

I was asking because when I was a kid in the seventies I was well aware of the dangers of smoking, unlike my parents before me, and in spite of…

I think so. An education campaign was in the first set of measures in 1985. Public awareness advertising campaign in 1986. Prominent health warnings on cigarette packaging arrived in 1987. Amazingly, domestic airlines didn’t go smokefree until…

I think it's pushing it to suppose that the raft of public measures to curb the smoking rate has had no role in the halving of the number of cigarettes smoked per adult since 1991. Can you propose a cause that bears no…

I'll leave that assessment for those more familiar with the international evidence base. Over the years Russell has posted a lot on this topic. All I'm doing is stating the conclusions I recall from it.

Again, does not trump the evidence that restricting availability works.

The problem has really arisen through Kronic’s owners pushing it into suburban dairies and, more recently, the priceless promotion of panicky media stories.

This is a 20th century diagnosis of a very 21st century problem [[http://www.kronic.co.nz/|Kronic Triple stack quarter ounce combo…

The logic behind why one should wear fresh undergarments when one leaves the house is to preserve one's dignity, if you have your old daggy knickers on whilst out and have an accident that puts you into hospital the nurses…

I can vouch for that, having been inadvertently sent on a very bad trip by the medical profession at…

I'd say they're not that different to the thousands of other NZ teens who get in trouble with alcohol every year and those who die from it every week.

Loss of young lives is a tragic waste, wherever it happens. Some get more publicity, sure.…

To be fair, five million Chinese youths start smoking every year and the WHO has predicted that a third of the 300 million young men in China will die prematurely of smoking-related ailments. The Chinese government does seem to be trying to curb availability, including by banning vending machines.

40c…

a cornerstone of harm minimisation approaches

No, but I believe Russell has, many times.

Can you link to that Sacha?

I’d take a guess that this is also a result of the legal status of the substance – They are probably a lot more likely to seek assistance from ill effects of a legal substance…

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10732754

Liking this too.:)
Coat getting now.....
in a minute
When a teenager tells me that they are smokin' or taking eccies, I tend to ask them, what they think of it. My dreadlocks tend to have teens relax around me and quite comfortable…

The evidence is apparently against you on that one. Same with pricing. Hence the local booze industry successfully lobbying our govt against any such changes.

The problem has really arisen through Kronic’s owners pushing it into suburban dairies and, more recently, the priceless promotion of panicky media stories.

Advocating restriction the retail opportunities doesn't seem to be any kind of solution. Whether it's alcohol, legal highs, hard illicit drugs, I'm not convinced that the point…

And I would use the "like" on this too

Me too.

Never apologise for a compliment :)

if she's the one we met, they're fools

"Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? If you want to be part of the summer of death."

Instead of helping the nation's youth, we seemingly want to conscript them instead.

Welcome to Mazengarb v2.0.

If it's mocking you want, we can do that too /PAS points and laughs

Speaking of which, on my recent visit to Auckland I was totally let down. Everyone was bloody friendly, it was sunny and the traffic flowed fine. Sorry, been waiting a few weeks…

Fixed.

I don’t like how many vasoconstrictors like Oxedrine/Synephrine there are in those pills. That stuff’s not good for you – although it’s probably worse for old folks than it is for healthy kids.

Ditto for…

Yet up until recently they've managed to stay out of the wrong headlines for various reasons. I suspect partly because wealthy parents have been able to buy, spin and (old-boy)…

And the rejoinder was salient too. 13 and 14 year-olds…

His view was that quite a few of those parents didn't…

I'm not about to click that link at work.

But there might be a…

That is staggering.

I do remain strongly of the view that suburban dairies are not the place for this product to be sold, and certainly not with large point of sale displays.

I recently spent 10 mins waiting for takeaways at a suburban stripmall, so had a bit of time to take in…

while you make them a nice cup of tea.

Vaguely related, there’s a lovely bit in the Mark Steel lecture on Thomas Paine riffing the idea of illicit tea smuggling, mostly based around what un-tea-drinker-like behaviour it would be.

It's obvious that the drug of choice by a long way is alcohol.

Emma: "There is definitely a binge-drinking culture. If you're going to be drinking, you're drinking to get drunk."

The chairman of King's College board of governors, Peter Ferguson, says the drinking age should be raised, but the…

I'm personally more concerned about the…

That's a fooking disgrace by some sick bastids.

Sounds like it's time for a dihydrogen monoxide campaign!

Are you missing a :"not" in there?

The dairy owner is a friend, originally from Gujarat, who also sells Kronic. I’m pretty sure knowing him that he would not sell (knowingly)…

There have been police stings catching underage selling in the act, and not just 'drugs' either. Such dairy owners anecdotally claim gang intimidation in their defence, but there's…

ETA: Looks like embedding is disabled for this video, you can watch the clip here.

At the very least, it’d stop some…

Anyone following Mr. Bowden of late can have little doubt he has gone totally troppo.

Production company details on IMDb:

– Dolce Cielo Productions
– Vicious Content Films
– TLE Productions

Insufficient data so far.

So fark-all chance of that happening, eh?

As in some poor sod who’s struggled to escape poverty/war/dictatorship somewhere in South Asia (said issues being something that we in the developed world can take a lot of the blame for). They’ve managed to move here and found that their qualifications are useless, most employers…

Indeed. But I couldn't find any track record of that sort of film on the part of…

that the last, plodding half hour in which the sole survivor is brought to Jesus by the hot guy from Twilight is almost unwatchably dull.

And "brought to Jesus" tells you all you need to know about the motivations of the people making it. "Reasoned judgement of risk" is not…