Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Reassure Me: cannabis,…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Bottom line is its pretty easy to grow – a lot simpler than making a good beer, at least in my experience.
That's been my experience of both beer brewing and growing plants. Plants just want to grow and and most of the trouble is in making sure you do actually harvest them when ready. You presume losses and compensate by just planting more plants. Of course, for this to work you have to be allowed to plant the plants, be able to access the seeds or seedlings, etc. As with tobacco, which is piss easy to grow, I doubt that most people would bother. But those who want to should be allowed, IMHO.
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Hard News: Reassure Me: cannabis,…, in reply to william blake,
If you are asking about what I think will happen, I just don't know. There really is a chance that everything I outlined above could come to pass, with only minor changes. Or it could never get off the drawing board due to the cowardliness or prejudice of politicians, or greed and special interests could morph it into some hideous capitalist monopoly.
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Hard News: Reassure Me: cannabis,…, in reply to william blake,
Are you asking what we’d like or what we think will happen?
What I’d like is pretty straightforward. You can grow it for personal use, get a license to sell it, the sale would be basically covered by the same rules as alcohol, probably including venue. Preparations of it beyond the raw plant itself should have to pass their own testing, most likely with estimations of how strong it is, and recommended maximum dosages. Usage would be similar to alcohol albeit that smoking should be done outside and not in a public space, which, like alcohol, would have restrictions on the consumption of it. Medicinal uses should have their own rules again, with very clear measures and guidelines, and the requirement of a prescription.
Essentially, where it’s for leisure, treat it like alcohol. Where it’s for medicinal purposes, treat it like painkiller/pyschoactive substance. We don’t have to reinvent everything. Consistency with the other main leisure psychoactive, alcohol, makes sense. Consistency with the other main prescription psychoactives for medicinal purposes makes sense. Consistency in use of a potentially unpleasant vapor/smoke to others around you (tobacco) makes sense.
Regarding growing it, most people would not bother, they'd buy it, just as they do with beer, but I simply can't see any reason not to allow people to grow it, so long as the sale of it is prohibited, without a license.
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My reason for being somewhat vague is because the overall thrust of the point was that sophisticated statistics should be brought to bear without us predetermining the details.
I'd say that both the goals of stratification you mention are worth considering. Proportional representation of strata matters, but ensuring at least a voice for all groups does too. When it comes to them voting they could have weights that ensure proportionality.
How you decide the strata might also depend on the question, and analysis of the population's attitude on the question beforehand. In the case of cannabis reform the strata that should be reasonably proportionally present might be different than if the question at hand were, say, abortion.
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I don't really want to explain in great detail what I mean by stratification based sampling here, btw. Suffice to say that if the aim in the selected jury is to get a sample that represents the population, then the methods by which to get such a sample are the work of experienced statisticians. Ideally the Ministry of Statistics would be involved in helping with this, making recommendations about the process to minimize all the kinds of errors that happen in sampling. That way efficiently sized juries that are essentially representative could probably be found.
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There’s a lot that’s really positive about this. However much I would like the government to just short circuit it all, a long democratically engaged deliberative process seems likely to me to deliver a better outcome. It’s also a really good process to set up generally.
The citizen jury concept is very interesting, essentially getting around the scale problem of participatory democracy (what works well in a small group doesn’t necessarily work well for a much larger one) by removing the numbers problem using fairly well understood methods for sampling. Nothing can solve all the problems, and it’s not the case that participatory methods are perfect in all respects even for small groups, but it’s damned well worth a go.
The larger the population sample the more representative of the community it becomes
There are diminishing returns from that, and the more serious issue of bias in the sample due to the method of selecting and contacting people, and differing rates of response, means that a stratification based approach makes more sense than massively increasing the sample size.
There is also the increased cost and the fact that the larger the sample, the less engaged the individuals become. Part of the point of the jury process would seem to me that the people involved really get into it, because their opinion really will make a difference. Of course a lot of people will be stupid on there, not listen, bring their prejudices etc. But I think the problems are much less than if you did this with, say, 1000 people. People interact very differently on this scale, than they do on a village sized conference. Once the numbers get really big, it pretty much degenerates to representative democracy, people crowding around the loudest voices, or into cliques with delegates. This is essentially how our political process already works. If we were going to do that, it might as well be left to parliament.
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Hard News: Miles on the Clock, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I’d be interested to know if those Meth detection’ boxes that were being touted actually work , and how?
If you mean the ones that monitored for meth use, I'd be amazed if they didn't work, TBH. Quite a lot of gas and vapour come off from vaporizing such drugs - the user can literally see the vapour cloud forming and after they exhale it as well. But now the real question is: So what if they work? The evidence that meth use is contaminating properties has now effectively been debunked, so the whole point of having a real time device, at significant ongoing cost, monitoring something that's effectively not important, has been killed.
Monitoring for meth production seems like it could still be possibly worth doing, but I don't think detecting meth itself would be necessary - it's the known dangerous industrial chemicals that are the real problem, and I would again be amazed if the detection of that isn't pretty straightforward. But the meth production numbers for house owners is not even vaguely on the scale of meth use, and it sounds like it's naturally diminishing anyway as most of the product is directly imported.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Something psychologically very, very dark happened during the John Key era.
If it did, John Key was a symptom of it, rather than a cause. I just don't think he was anywhere near as influential as his fan club and his haterz made out. National's polling would appear to be almost completely decoupled from its leadership ATM. Labour's clearly is not, otherwise the Jacinda bounce is inexplicable, nor is the Cunliffe flop.
Key was a surfer on the human wave. He rode it, but he did not cause the wave.
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Hard News: The miserable archive, in reply to Russell Brown,
I wouldn't put it past HNZ to have used private detectives to follow Jesse around. Debt collectors seem to do this almost as a sideline.
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Hard News: We are, at last, navigating…, in reply to Russell Brown,
My god, imagine how many times that bloody scenario has played out in the last few years.
Having bought a home-and-income in the last few years I can say it played out like that for me too. The building inspection required by the bank tried hard to upsell me to meth testing, which was really expensive, on the grounds that the house was part tenancy. The property managers I approached tried to push meth-testing as well. Several of the vendors of the houses we looked at made big issues of their in-house meth minders.
The work you had done, and other journos too, gave me the resolve to ignore the shit out of these panic-pushers. I fixed moisture and heating issues instead, despite the earnest advice of several agents that it was money completely wasted, as the cost would never be recouped from tenants. They might be right about that, sadly, but at least I sleep better, and as for the meth use, it's really not my business. I'm impressed to see it called directly by the government, it's a really, really promising sign for evidence led policy making.