Posts by Alfie
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Hard News: The Scientology front…, in reply to Johann Schoonees,
I disagree with your disagreement. It's about health, not justice.
I also disagree with Simon's disagreement. While "justice" has taken the lead for over 50 years, treat drugs as a health problem and justice naturally follows. And if our little country has learned one really important lesson lately, it's that following science can produce some great results.
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As a modest spokesman for the (just) over 65s I'm a little taken aback. While you'd traditionally expect older people to be more conservative, we're the generation who grew up rebelling, smoking dope and giving most things a shot. For that reason I would have expected if not a full-on vote for legalisation, at least a more relaxed attitude towards cannabis.
There's been well-reported support from some Grey Power groups and for good reason. The older you get, the more little niggles like arthritis change your life in subtle ways. Cannabis is a pretty ideal drug for dealing with low-level pain because it sends it to the background with only happy side effects. And not an opioid in sight. Not all, but most friends around my age are smokers but maybe that's just because we tend to hang out with like-minded souls. We self-select our friends.
Cardiom has a point. Even if they stretched credibility to its limit by portraying Paula Benefit as an anti-drug warrior, National's ongoing scare tactics will have an effect. Their people will probably vote tribally and it's a pity National couldn't put aside party politics to cooperate on an important health and social issue.
So while there may be a bit of National bias to that poll, if that's the case it'll likely be reflected at the referendum.
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A quick update to this thread, because the usual perps are involved. Not content with vandalising Northland, looting swamp kauri and rupturing fuel pipelines, they've moved on to wreaking havoc on West Coast conservation land.
Oravida. Destroying paradise, one piece at a time. It's what we do.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/06/02/1079363/rehabilitated-conservation-mine-a-desolate-wasteland
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As an aside, our daughter attended a few 'Boom' festivals in Portugal over recent years and was impressed by the health approach and onsite drug testing there. And even more importantly how clean most samples actually were. All of the MDMA and acid tests all came back clean with only the coke samples being largely something else. Usually Novacaine.
All power to Know Your Stuff. They do a great job.
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Hard News: Psychedelic science:…, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
I see this as a sort of pre-study proof-of-concept. When you're designing the initial stage of a six week course in which you're not sure you'll even detect measurable results, it makes sense to choose candidates most likely to hopefully register on the scale. Not as any sort of representative sample, but to prove that the results of larger scale testing will be measureable. No?
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Alfie,
This 1,000 person study of 40 year olds conducted by Otago Uni suggests at best a close result for the reeferendum and probably much worse.
Joe Boden is quoted on the Stuff story as saying "most were interviewed before the referendum was announced." I'd expect that must make a difference with Helen Clark and others choosing sides, more positive stories in the media and loads of good information being made available by the Drug Foundation.
What was the timing on this Joe? Do 40 year olds provide a representative sample of the voting population, or are there generational influences which might make that group in any way more conservative, wary or risk averse? I'd appreciate your insight.
I believe that public perception has moved markedly over the last few months and my gut feeling is around 60/40 in favour, but that's probably because I don't mix enough with the wrong people.
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Some medicinal users must feel like they're in no man's land at the moment. Here's a couple of cases from the top of the South Island -- 20 and 32 plants, no sign of commercial activity.
I wonder how much "community harm" these prosections have actually saved. Judges are becoming increasingly sympathetic but the trauma of being busted, fined and having your crop destroyed must be a huge disruption to anyone's life. When you factor in the hours of police and court time involved it's hard to see any winners under our current laws.
Perhaps one day soon in our post-covid, near-future NZ we'll look back on these times and remember them fondly as 'the prohibition years'. Hopefully science trumps misinformation, the referendum passes by a large majority which the incoming Labour/Green government wisely respects and our society becomes a slightly better and fairer place.
Young people will wonder how our society could have got this issue so wrong for decades. Why we followed the US down the drugs-R-bad rabbit hole for so long when their main motivation was always to punish blacks and mexicans.
With retail outlets readily available, new generations of kiwis will view drugs primarily as a health problem. The mystery which inevitably accompanies illegality will have gone and we'll be able to look back on our current laws as an anachronism, our enforcement techniques as crude and heavy-handed.
There will be folk tales... dinner party stories of the kindness of green fairies and all of those little Al Capones who took risks to see people right. "Be kind" becomes the new kiwi mantra and we'll all be able to take a deep breath and wonder why such a common sense approach took so damn long to implement.
Roll on September.
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Simon Armstrong,
It wasn’t even 4:20.
It's always 4:2... er, forget that. And yeah... NZ Twitter was sniggering a lot.
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Hash is maybe port, and modern concentrates are the spirits. They’re breathtakingly strong.
Does that make bucket bongs the equivalent of the yard glass?
I'd like to see a range of strengths and varieties available at retail, the same way there is with alcohol. My main point was that a law restricting THC levels to <10% could be counterproductive if it risks excluding users who are used to something better. Whereas a tax on THC levels seems more of a grown-up approach which hopefully achieves a similar control aim in the long term.
And you're right Ben. With the exception of medical events, the worst effect of a cannabis overdose is a good night's sleep.
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Hard News: The last – and best – parts…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Here’s the 2010 ESR research...
Thanks for that. A couple of things stand out for me.
The inexperience of the growers was evidenced by different problems encountered in each of the three cycles, each of which would be expected to negatively impact the yield and THC data obtained.
As you'd expect. However for inexperienced growers to produce "an average of 687g (24.2oz) of dry head per plant" seems unbelievable. They must have turned out three metre monsters, in hydro. And weighed the stalks. Has that stat affected Police perceptions around the potential value of a plant? Then there's this.
THC values for individual plants ranged from 4.3 to 25.2%.
With such a massive mix-and-match result ranging from hemp to heaven over just 18 plants, you'd have to question the seeds or stock used. That was ten years ago and I imagine the Hikirangi boys, Helius et al will have more up to date information. Somebody must have.