Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Perception and reality in the…, in reply to andrew r,
A lot of that is Defence lawyer speak. On the books cannabis is illegal, in attempt to persuade the sentencing Justice to give Home D which Bryant was right on the cusp of potentially getting, one has to show the Sentencer that assn with said illegal substance is diminishing, – kinda standard.
Yeah, fair enough. I think it was really the judge saying "I don't really think you're rehabilitating that much". Well, yeah. Dude's 62. Not really about to change his style now.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
There are still restrictions on availability. You can only buy it at certain places if you’re of a certain age, right. That hasn’t prevented health and societal problems or reduced consumption per capita of those permitted to purchase it. As a society, we drink more every year.
At the moment, yes -- and that probably has something to do with a steady increase in availability.
But we drink way less than we used to even 30 years ago, never mind in the early 20th century.
The major exception since the 1990s has been in youth drinking, as Brian Easton points out in a fascinating paper which I will use as my excuse to toodle off and start making dinner. With a glass of wine.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
Such an urge would have been laudable indeed if more than just a few of the politicians who put the policies in place actually held it. But much drug policy was formulated in the 50’s, 60s and 70s, and was more of a reaction to youth rebellion against the establishment – “Drugs make them do these things; let’s ban drugs!”
Oh, they thought they were preventing harms -- even mythical harms. The task is walking back the assumptions and looking at what actually does reduce harm.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
What? Please point to ANY statement where I suggested ANY of this?
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."
I think what you meant was that an age restriction isn't eliminating problems with young adolescents drinking. Well, yeah. And making a law against murder hasn't stopped people killing each other either.
Can I get this straight? Do you think that abolishing any age restriction on the purchase of alcohol would result in more or fewer 12 year-olds consuming alcohol?
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Ah. This is the study I saw referenced about the impact of point-of-sale displays on youth uptake of smoking. From last year:
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 survey, teenagers who frequent establishments where this type of advertising exists are more than twice as likely to try smoking than those who do not visit them.
More than 2,000 teenagers between the ages of 11 and 14 years old participated in the survey, which recently appeared in the journal Pediatrics. Experts believe the study is a major eye-opener into the effects of direct tobacco advertising on young people.
“The tobacco industry argues the purpose of advertising is to encourage smokers to switch brands, but this shows that advertising encourages teenagers to pick up a deadly habit,” explained Lisa Henriksen, a senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and author of the study.
The contention is that there’s little evidence that that PoS branding actually does cause existing smokers to switch brands, and more that its chief benefit is in recruiting new smokers.
Yes, this does make things harder for small retailers. I’ve seen figures saying that as much as half their revenue in NZ is in tobacco sales. And the tobacco companies pay them on top of that for PoS displays. But …
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
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?
Do you dispute that removing age restrictions on the purchase of alcohol would create a greater problem? Would you seriously, knowing what we know about the risks of cannabinoids in adolescence, propose making the synthetics available without age restriction? Would you change the law to make it legal to sell cigarettes to children?
I'm honestly struggling to see your argument here.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
Basically, we've repeatedly seen that a key factor in the "legals" becoming a problem is irresponsible commercialisation and marketing. It happened with BZP, and it's happening now with the cannabinomimetics. I think the future of sensible non-prohibition approaches rests quite heavily on addressing that risk.
It's not just me. In the UK, Transform's blueprint for drug legalisation (executive summary) has a lot to say about regulation of availability (especially to young people), packaging, etc.
They're quite frank about the fact that getting the balance right on availability isn't easy -- too harsh and you encourage an illicit market again -- but quite a lot of thinking has been done about this stuff.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
No, that’s only your interpretation of what I said, filtered through being pissed off with me for allegedly saying that the stuff you’ve been posting on for years is “mere correlation”. Which I didn’t.
No, I'm not at all pissed off. But you made a pretty big claim in declaring that an age restriction on alcohol purchase hasn't worked because "we see 12, 13 and 14 year olds regularly getting drunk." I'm not sure that's a sustainable statement.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
I did not “propose a mere correlation” – I warned against mistaking correlation for cause, as Sacha had said “Again, does not trump the evidence that restricting availability works”. I don’t see hard evidence that this is the case. I see genuine hypothesis and results that indicate it may be a factor. But equally, price is a factor, available income, health awareness and public prohibition are all factors, none of which I see as decisive, least of all the grotesque warnings on the packets.
I think the most sensible way to see it is as a package of complementary measures.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to nzlemming,
Persons under 18 are restricted from buying alcohol, yet we see 12, 13 and 14 year olds regularly getting drunk. So that really worked, didn’t it?
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 more drunk 12 year-olds?