Posts by Russell Brown
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I find this a little frustrating. What if pot-smoking doesn't only lead to psychosis, at x-cost factor per annum, but is a substitute for alcohol for which the cost factor is 2-3x? This isn't a criticism of the methodolgy, as above, rather the assumptions that are fed into this study.
This occurred to me too. I actually know former problem drinkers and alcoholics who now content themselves with a social toke. By any reasonable measure, harm has been greatly reduced, but there's no way of modelling that here.
But again: I don't think that was the intention of the exercise.
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As I said in another thread, sure tobacco costs waaaaaay more than pot in terms of cancers and other illnesses, but that's because pot isn't used as widely. Remove the legal sanctions on its consumption, and watch the related harm figures soar.
Actually, no.
The drug use survey by the School of Public Health at Auckland Uni consistently demonstrates that the legal status of marijuana is a very weak factor in people's decisions to use it or not.
It comes way down the list, below the likes of "didn't like it any more".
OTOH, I don't think legalising everything right now would work out too well. One of the problems with P has been that it found its way to people with no experience of hard drugs -- and who thus didn't recognise any personal warning signals about use and addiction. Amplifying that phenomenon by legalising methamphetamine would get terribly messy, at least for a while.
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A kilogram of LSD would be pretty damaging, yes.
The Herald report -- surprise! -- left off half the sentence from the report. The full quote is:
LSD is the most damaging drug per kilogram, at $1.05 billion per kilogram, but due to the small amount used it causes little harm (0.5 percent of total harm, or $265 per user).
Do the responsible thing, kids: choose LSD.
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I haven't fisked the whole thing yet, but if you take the costs of prohibition out of their numbers, they reduce hugely.
They just about damn well disappear if you remove the rather dubious "harm" of "productive resources diverted due to drug production", which is the largest cost quoted in the index.
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That the report does not include tobacco and alcohol says to me that, maybe, the report contained these figures originally but when you looked at the figures the police could only say "See, we are wasting your money chasing pot heads, we have far bigger problems to deal with"
When you look at the figures in the index for drug-related crime, without alcohol, they actually seem quite low (although, comfortingly, 100% of drug offences were drug-related).
Including alcohol would have created just the effect you suggest.
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__after the taser trail report debacle__
Oh, oh, scandal? Didn't hear about that one. Or are you just talking about how it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they would be recommended, and the trial was mostly a façade?
The Ombudsman gave the police a serious lashing for cherry-picking trial data and "sanitising" their final report:
http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2008/06/sanitised.html
Quite dishonest, actually.
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I can only conclude that the knowingly set the brief for this report clearly with PR in mind.
I think that is the correct conclusion, unfortunately.
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Good grief ...
An English rugby official says a rape allegation against four players was "designed to destabilise" the tour - and suggests Kiwis' bitterness at their early exit from the Rugby World Cup might also be a relevant factor.
The original article is here. The official quoted seems to imply that the police handling of a rape allegation was guided by lingering resentment over a sports result.
They really do think we're angry little colonials, don't they?
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__(2) And more importantly, Google needs us to continue to place trust in it__
I don't need to trust the company that tells me where to find information on the net, I just need it to do it efficiently.
No Gmail account then? Google Docs? Well, they still have a whole bunch of your search data. An evil company could do plenty bad things with that.
any company that accumulates vast swags of money is inherently evil especially when masses in their own communities are finding it difficult to make ends meet, however nicely that company might recycle their office paper.
Does that include music companies? ;-)
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@Duane
I'm pretty sure they said explicitly that Analytics data is not used. That would certainly be evil. I think it would also violate the Analytics terms of use.
They do use them, but sort of blindfolded, which I suppose explains why my numbers are different in Trends vs Analytics:
The company said its Trends for Web sites service can give a user insights into traffic and patterns for a given Web site, with a comparison of up to five sites, and information on related sites and top searches for each.
For any user, a graph can show the number of daily unique visitors. To see the actual numbers, a user needs to sign into their Google Account. Also displayed are a list of regions where the visitors came from, other Web sites visited by the same visitors, and other terms searched for.
Google said the data comes from a variety of sources, including not only Google search data, but opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and various other third-party market research. Google added that personally identifiable information is not used.
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