Hard News: Leaf and Tips
57 Responses
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81stcolumn, in reply to
Agreed: Harm reduction isn't the only way, but my final point would still stand on the basis that a critical theorist for example might still seek to be better informed.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It's not the only way, but it is a highly practical way, very conducive to law-making. I think utilitarianism is better than previous systems, with ideas of revenge and so on in them, it's an improvement on that. But it's still a damned old idea.
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..proof that tobacco was harmful
That was proved by finding mechanisms of causation to confirm the epidemiological results. You can demonstrate experimentally that cigarette smoke is mutagenic, etc.
utilitarianism
That always takes me straight to Bentham's Panopticon. Something which I think many modern "liberals" would like us all to live in...
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I am obliged to presume that Counties-Manukau Police only send me me huge, uncompressed pictures of illicit drugs because they want me to use them.
Maybe they were trying to give you a heads-up...
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Stewart, in reply to
For example, given that the social harm of alcohol was rated more highly than tobacco, should we kick drinkers out of restaurants and make them pursue their anti-social habit on street corners?
To save us from the perils of passive drinking?
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Sacha, in reply to
the perils of passive drinking
like violence, you mean
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Sacha, in reply to
no scientist mistakes correlation for causation
that's what politicians are for
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Stewart, in reply to
Dunno about you, but I've seen much more violence as a result of street-corner drinking than drinking in restaurants.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
That was proved by finding mechanisms of causation to confirm the epidemiological results. You can demonstrate experimentally that cigarette smoke is mutagenic, etc.
In the case of the link between adolescent cannabis use and adult psychosis, the Dunedin researchers identified a genetic predisposition in 2005 :
The team found that in New Zealanders with two copies of the "normal" version of COMT, smoking cannabis had little effect on their mental health. In people with one normal and one "bad" form of the gene, smoking cannabis slightly increased their risk of psychosis.
But for people with two copies of the bad gene, cannabis spelled trouble: smoking the drug as a teenager increased their likelihood of developing psychosis by a factor of 10.
This year, researchers at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland reported that they had shown physical changes in the brain related to COMT and adolescent cannabis use .
I presume this is the sort of thing you're calling for.
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Richard Aston, in reply to
I reckon the idea that some people are more susceptible to psychosis from early cannabis use make a lot of sense. I have seen it so often with younger people I have worked , some just cannot handle regular use and dip into a series of psycotic episodes and others seem to keep it all together quite well, abet lacking motivation and showing some chaotic thinking.
So how do we regulate for that ?
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mark taslov, in reply to
So how do we regulate for that ?
The more pertinent question being why would you want to regulate for that? How do we regulate for that with alcohol? Prolonged use causes psychosis in selected users. Surely the ideal endgame for a progressive developed society is one where the greater majority are sufficiently educated and empowered to make responsible decisions regarding their own health, regardless of any progress in society as a whole there will always be casualties.
One would hope that this developed society is one where the police aren't charged with destroying flora and fauna and charging the gardeners. Certainly a society where we stop expecting politicians to make these very personal choices for us would be a start, education and socialization being both our closest allies and our worst enemies.
While the environmental impact of this bust is minimal, the very simple fact that another 80 photosynthesizers bought it as the hands of strikingly unskilled photographers highlights quite readily that there is a plethora of employment opportunities out there for those with lowered IQ and that this low-hang is clearly rife. It could also be argued that an IQ surplus in an employment sector geared primarily for tourism and agriculture could be a contributing factor to the wastrel mentality.
Clearly age restrictions on alcohol do nothing to diminish (and arguably do enhance) its attractiveness and desirability to the young: there being less youth huffers than youth drinkers.
Random thoughts aside, it feels incredibly generous to categorize the core issues here as much more than a well orchestrated international campaign of misinformation and herbicide.
Andin, your still going to hell ;)
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andin, in reply to
So how do we regulate for that ?
You dont regulate for that. Having a good home environment with loving caring parents who will listen to the children's problems as they encounter them while growing up and who are sensitive and educated enough to know what has happened. And, without judgement, be able to help that child to understand how to deal with this in the future. If it means not partaking be able to help them deal with that when it next happens.
Sorry I was off in my ideal world again. -
Slightly off topic but worth mentioning is the brilliant article by Steve Braunias in the current Metro about a musician who was sent to prison for two years for selling marijuana.
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Richard Aston, in reply to
Andin ( and mark) yes absolutely agree the ideal is no regulation and good home environments, engaged parents and a broader social environment supporting informed and individual choices.
The above would solve an awful lot of the worlds problems including cannabis induced psychosis in those who cannot handle this herb.
Its a beautiful vision and in the meantime , shit happens. So given its not an ideal world how do we handle this , are regulations and law any help at all? -
So, things to say.
The police are required by law to uphold stupid and harmful laws. When there's a potentially long sentence and a high chance of conviction they have to go after it, so they'll always go hard after harshly prohibited materials.
Cannabis (particularly when eaten) is terribly weaksauce in terms of harm potential. Children shouldn't smoke pot, certainly not heavily and consistently, and doubly certain not if doing so makes them a bit psycho.
But there are kids smoking pot right now. Heavily. Even when it makes them a bit psycho. Have done for a very long time, will do in the foreseeable future. Knew a couple myself in my younger days, despite prohibition. Various studies in the states show the rates of inappropriately heavy use of drugs simply do not change with prohibition. It's about 1% of the population doing something stupid with drugs now, and always has been.
All that changes is you get a higher prison population. Keep one drug dealer in prison for life and you just create a market for a new one on the outside, because capitalism (like the internet) sees censorship as an obstacle and routes around it.
If dealers last 2 years between getting busted, and you put them away for 15 years instead of 1, you have 11 times as many dealers and 165 times as many people in prison on the same charge, but no effect on supply. That's not sane.
Price indicators over the years shows prohibition is not even a significant hardship on the supply side. It's not just that it does harm, it also doesn't do any good. Catch 10% of meth shipments and shipments increase by 11% to compensate. Immediately. Put more pot growers away, more pot is grown. That gap between work and welfare? Yep.
You know what works? Tax. Actually shifts prices. Pays for treatment of said harms. Like magic. Limit sales to chemists, if you care about who profits and how good they might be at spotting abusers.
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mark taslov, in reply to
(Richard)? Some people are more susceptible to psychosis. How are we as a society prepared to help them?
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Mark Easterbrook, in reply to
And what would Greg O’Connor et al say about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition?
That they’ve got a brilliant street address?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
(Richard)? Some people are more susceptible to psychosis. How are we as a society prepared to help them?
A strong social sanction on providing cannabis to young teenagers would help a lot.
It’s actually this kind of social prohibition that has helped turn around the meth boom. The P-pipe became a very uncool thing.
Then, under any kind of reformed cannabis law, it should still be an offence to provide it to under-18s. And there should be prosecutions if necessary.
You’d also hope it could become practical for people with genetic vulnerability to be identified and and warned of their particular risk.
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A strong social sanction on providing cannabis to young teenagers would help a lot.
It’s actually this kind of social prohibition that has helped turn around the meth boom. The P-pipe became a very uncool thing.
Absolutely. It's also worth noting that for all the ubiquity of alcohol in NZ society, it's very rare to see adults giving young (<15) kids large amounts of alcohol. You don't regulate social sanction, you do so by empowering people (and disempowering those who actively harm). Those kinds of conditions can be created under prohibition, but they're not created by prohibition. Me, I used to do Lots of Things, but stopped doing them when it became clear that some of them had very clear links to mental harm, and that others had slightly weaker links that because of my genetic background I'd be unwise to test.
We have a situation now in which people (often rightly) distrust harm messages because they perceive them to be part of a general condemnatory atmosphere of prohibition.
I see the same here in Timor-Leste, in which societal shame and fear of sexual behaviours prevents people from internalising information and change which would reduce their risk of HIV/AIDS. The tragedy is already happening, but a lot more is incipient.
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mark taslov, in reply to
That all sounds good to me. I'm liking the way you're stepping up on this issue this year Russell, good on you. When my sister was busted by her school at 15, she was ordered to receive counselling and suspended for a fortnight, +1/-1.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
A strong social sanction on providing cannabis to young teenagers would help a lot.
It’s actually this kind of social prohibition that has helped turn around the meth boom. The P-pipe became a very uncool thing.
Then, under any kind of reformed cannabis law, it should still be an offence to provide it to under-18s. And there should be prosecutions if necessary.
You’d also hope it could become practical for people with genetic vulnerability to be identified and and warned of their particular risk
Spot on. And let's hope these things can be achieved with or without legalisation. Though legalisation would probably help.
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You don't regulate social sanction, you do so by empowering people (and disempowering those who actively harm). Those kinds of conditions can be created under prohibition, but they're not created by prohibition.
The social sanction is are prevented from occuring by prohibition.
Cannabis is a low priced, discretionary purchase that causes an enjoyable effect and is potentially harmful. Its the sort of product that is naturally appealing to young adults and older teenagers.
Under prohibition sellers go to the people who find their product most appealing, because there lie the biggest profits. And because teenagers are really unlikely to be cops there is another reason to target them even more than adults.
Only if a floor of 18 years old was put in place could we start to see the positive social sanctions we want. Sellers would be able to profit only if they didn't target teenagers and policing would be geared the same way.
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hmmmm.... on the subject of drugs, I see on the front page of today's The Beijing News a headline announcing that people buying cold/flu medicine containing epedrines will have to register their ID card. Ephedrine is one of the precursors of meth, isn't it? I believe that's the kind of medicine Chinese people getting an NZ visa are given a brochure by immigration warning them about.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
And I wonder, if this particular reform is what it seems, it is actually carried through (a very big if), and I'm getting my pharmacology right, what effect, if any, it'll have on supply chains in the NZ meth industry.
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Howard Marks weighs in :
These findings are likely to be mistakenly adopted by those who advocate continuing the prohibition of cannabis as a justification of their position. But assuming that such correlations are true, it is obviously important that cannabis use takes place within a framework where age limits may be imposed. I have been a dedicated supporter of the relegalising of cannabis since the mid-1960s. Neither I, nor any of the various pro-legalisation organisations with which I have been associated, have ever advocated that legalisation should not be accompanied by age limits and other controls. Age limits for a large number of activities are well entrenched and accepted by society, and tend to lie between the ages of 16 to 18.
But there are no age limits in a black market. Neither is there any other form of control. Prohibition is not control, and should not be equated as such. It is the abrogation of control leading to the unregulated peddling of adulterated substances outside the reach of the law. Apart from not beginning to achieve its aims, prohibition makes drugs artificially expensive and spawns an avalanche of acquisitive criminal behaviour.
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