Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Leaf and Tips, in reply to Will de Cleene,
There’s this report from earlier in the year, but there was a meta-study a few years ago I’ll try to dig out. Grinspoon’s not the only one.
No. And for a higher-level perspective, this review published this month in the British Medical Journal (blog article here ), places cannabis lower on a scale of harm than basically every other drug. Alcohol is fourth.
The evidence of other countries also doesn't suggest that reform of the law would result in a major increase in use. So the public health issues you're deal with a basically the ones you're dealing with now. But I do fret about easier availability for adolescents. Everyone has to get their heads around the idea that younger teenagers smoking pot is a very bad thing.
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Hard News: Changing news, in reply to Simon Lyall,
Actually it is a marketing name.
I stand corrected. But they do ask that people they deal with use their marketing name, believe me.
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Hard News: Leaf and Tips, in reply to George Darroch,
Professor Lester Grinspoon was given Federal funding to prove the hypothesis that smoking cannabis is bad for you.
I’ll readily accept this contention if you provide evidence for it (this is the internet, after all).
Grinspoon's qualifications are in psychiatry. He didn't do research -- it was a literature review, in 1967. The idea that this should be the last word on the topic doesn't hold up at all.
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Up Front: Choice, Bro, in reply to Emma Hart,
Or… no. Everyone’s doing it tonight.
Those sheets are confusing.
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Up Front: Choice, Bro, in reply to Emma Hart,
My god I love the internet. Here are the voting sheets.
Chris Finlayson, a firm and somewhat troubling NO right up till tonight, voted AYE.
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Hard News: Changing news, in reply to Shaun Lott,
p.s. “AUT” is fine. “AUT University” is not.
That's the official public name of the institution, though. And when they've been kind enough to get us their two star guests, I'm hardly about to rudely refuse to use it.
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Up Front: Choice, Bro, in reply to Emma Hart,
Yeah, depends on how other debates go. Parliament today is saying debate between nine and ten? Kevin Hague said in Twitter before he was expecting a vote about half nine.
The debate might start as early as 8pm, people are saying.
On Twitter.
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Hard News: Leaf and Tips, in reply to George Darroch,
More seriously, inhalation of burnt organic compounds at high temperatures has significant public health implications; implications which are waved away by advocates of an entirely unregulated sphere*. Whatever our policy decisions, these need to be grappled with.
Indeed. It feels jarring watching people in American Weed inhaling huge quantities of smoke in the name of “health” (although I've read credible arguments that cannabis is less damaging than tobacco smoke). The harm-minimisation approach would presumably favour something like this
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Hard News: Changing news, in reply to Morgan Nichol,
I don’t really see why the size of paper the words are printed on is treated as so controversial by some people.
I suppose it's because the same word is used to describe both the physical format and the style of journalism traditionally associated with with that format.
A tabloid format might mean less depth, in that the stories are likely to be shorter (they will be, slightly, in the new Herald).
On the other hand, it would be hard to say that The Guardian has been any less good since it switched to Berliner format, and the Herald on Sunday generally has a lot more actual news than the Sunday Star Times does.
I like the smaller pages from a design point of view -- it's easier to theme a page, devote the whole space to the story.
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Speaking of pets, Paul Brislen was briefly under the impression that the Colin Emma addresses here was Colin the Cat of Point Chevalier. So for the avoidance of doubt ...