Posts by chris
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:D coming back to the topic, if I may:
The problem has really arisen through Kronic’s owners pushing it into suburban dairies and, more recently, the priceless promotion of panicky media stories.
This is a 20th century diagnosis of a very 21st century problem Kronic Triple stack quarter ounce combo $309.95 add to cart. that's right there, in front of you. The closest dairy. Similarly with legislation to ban branding on cigarettes: Waste of time and money for everyone involved. Having just completed a month of 100% online household shopping, I'm convinced that these so-called solutions are an all expenses paid extraction of urine by the NZ Government.
So basically: "long term solutions are all very well but we need to deal with problem on the ground, Urgently!"
You deserve better. Legislation appealing to our intelligence is more likely to beget intelligent behaviour, whilst Legislation appealing to our stupidity...
Mr Dunne said the changes would mean police would "feel more confident they have a package of things to enforce". He said the planned new restrictions would ensure sales were largely limited to "the person who knows that's the store to go to, to buy it.... I'm not sure the cat's out of the bag permanently. It's certainly having a bit of a run around the field at the moment." (linked below)
The cat's gone dude. You smoked it.
Thank you kindly for your point in the right direction Russell, I learned that despite the vast amount of diddling around the NZ Govt has done with age limits, packaging, branding, advertising, accessibility, roughly 23% of New Zealanders still smoke (2006) , compared with approximately 23% of Chinese (2008) (40c). Giving and taking numbers, shit still doesn't begin to stack up in favour of the diddlers, who callously and unscientifically omit the quantifier "too much" in their slogan; "smoking ________kills".
I found this perspective interesting Jeremy;
Sorry, I know I'll go on, stopping.
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To be fair, five million Chinese youths start smoking every year and the WHO has predicted that a third of the 300 million young men in China will die prematurely of smoking-related ailments. The Chinese government does seem to be trying to curb availability, including by banning vending machines.
40c (NZ) for a pack of cigarettes and dubious population control methods give that curb a rather sinister angle Russell. In all honesty I’d attest that the Chinese Government are doing the bare minimum to curb smoking, and I’ve never seen a vending machine here, but I have 3 convenience stores within 100m as I type.
British American Tobacco has tried (so far unsuccessfully) to set up a joint venture to manufacture cigarettes in China. U.S. giant Altria, formerly Philip Morris, has also been negotiating with the government to manufacture and sell its top-selling Marlboro brand on the mainland. Indeed, with most Chinese smokers hacking away from the harsh, high-tar brands produced by the state-owned monopoly, the China National Tobacco Corporation, foreign companies have been stumbling over themselves to hawk their wares.
Pretty much speaks for itself. There's something in that for the NZ govt methinks - Beehive beer.
These are telling statistics Russell, in that again they point to the role socialization plays in our use of drugs. 2/3 of Chinese males are smokers while only 7% of females are smokers. That’s a huge gap, and given that there is no significant large scale gender segregation, this indicates that proximity to the drug positively withers against the powerful forces of social conditioning.
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Hard News: What the kids do, in reply to Sacha,
The evidence is apparently against you on that one.
Can you link to that Sacha?
I’d take a guess that this is also a result of the legal status of the substance – They are probably a lot more likely to seek assistance from ill effects of a legal substance than they are from an illegal one, or at least they wait til things are a lot worse on the illegal ones.
True Jeremy.
My dreadlocks tend to have teens relax around me and quite comfortable to chat about drugs.
No longer being a teen and having never laid eyes on the dreads, you have a very chilled and understanding manner that makes you seem very approachable. +1
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The problem has really arisen through Kronic’s owners pushing it into suburban dairies and, more recently, the priceless promotion of panicky media stories.
Advocating restriction the retail opportunities doesn't seem to be any kind of solution. Whether it's alcohol, legal highs, hard illicit drugs, I'm not convinced that the point of sale is as relevant to dealing with the issue as better education, media reporting and socialization. Perhaps 5-10 years ago that could have helped to minimize the exposure, but this horse has bolted.
It sounds like you're a good parent Russell, from the sounds of it your family benefits from excellent informed communication and a healthy degree of mutual trust. Therein lies any long term solution.
Dude, you probably will use pot at some point, and we can always talk about that, but you have to believe me that the science says it’s a really dumb idea right now.
As simple as it is, that's where it's at: Opening up that dialogue (as you have Russell) is a very real and workable solution. Good on you.
Banning this or that location from sale seems little more than diluted prohibition. In China, corner convenience stores traditionally sell cigarettes, beer and 57% rice wine (1$NZ for 600ml), ID-less transactions, and there aren't paralytic or even drunk youths on the streets, nor are their 12 year olds smoking in the bike sheds. Like anywhere, I'm sure it does happen, but more often than not the problem can be traced to family discord, poor examples, inattentive or overly judgemental parents.
To make any kind of dent into these issues, we'll always lag behind as long as we focus on what it is, where it can be purchased, what not to do, instead of focusing on our own attitudes , educated how to use (whatever) responsibly (rather than being scared into surreptitious behaviour), and of course minimizing the health risks.
An analogy, At a party, a bottle of single malt whiskey on the table, untouched, holds your gaze. Suddenly the host and her younger brother Timson appear, grab the table and move it six feet further afield (to increase the size of the dance floor). Does it lessen your desire for the whiskey?
Given the safety of New Zealand roads (and streets) and the prevalence of illicit drug suppliers (in your area), I'm not convinced moving the sale from dairies will make the environment significantly safer for anyone. This argument that decreasing visibility or decreasing availability works, is tenuous.
As you may know from the news reports, there has been a spate of emergency admissions related to Kronic. Compared to alcohol, Kronic’s toxicity is very, very low:
Despite the cost to the tax payer, this is indicative of a positive change in that seeking medical supervision shows a greater degree of self-responsibility and a greater perception of societal tolerance than in the past when the solution invariably involved some variation of locking yourself in your bedroom and hardening up.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Emma Hart,
Last night's CTV news. It's pretty depressing.
And then some. But another win for Apple by the sound of things. Reid Stiven said the EQC have 400 people in the field and 200 in the building -
"today is the last day for the roll out of iPads so all our staff will be equipped with the iPad ® which is gonna significantly improve our service and our ability to get the information to our claimants."
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Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Sacha,
Communicate details. For example, don’t tell us ‘100 buildings are scheduled for urgent demolition’ instead, give us a list of those 100 buildings. Don’t tell us it’s a complicated issue. Explain the details of what complicates the issue. Explain the why in detail, impart understanding to people when you don’t have definitive answers.
Bizarrely these sound exactly like the kind of demands citizens would be forced to level in The People's Republic of China, the primary difference being that in China 100 buildings would be demolished in a month by 1000 peasants with sledgehammers, for a pittance. So in its way, all things considered, this situation - worse on both counts.
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Muse: Some Link Crack To Tide You Over..., in reply to Rich Lock,
Neato, for those almost always oriented to the point of banality, the Kuuk Thaayorre language makes it all worthwhile.
Mandarin Chinese has a correlation between time and space that I'm quite partial to:
Next (week/ month/ time)= down
last = upI like the imagery, not sure how die Christen would handle it though.
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** For clarity: There is absolutely no way I consider this ‘giving in’. Sexual acts are still rape when one or more person doesn’t want to. ALWAYS.
Consent is a very elusive concept to pin down, and as much as we can deny and exploit that leeway between the word of law and human experience, we will seldom escape our conscience. There are some heartening admissions on this thread, and as I read I feel I’d be disingenuous and doing a disservice by not sharing.
When I was sixteen I attended one of those barn parties they hold out in the wops. It was the first party I’d attended, I’d never been properly intoxicated or seen people in such a state, and so armed with 6 Toohey’s light courtesy of mum – I wasn’t at any point in the evening categorically drunk.
As the evening hit it’s crescendo, I was accosted by a girl from school who jumped on me and thrust her tongue down my throat. I managed to extricate myself from the position a few times, but finally rather than playing fugitive, I relinquished, and let her tongue have its way with my throat, and despite the taste of old booze and vomit I let my natural virginal hormonal curiosity get the better of me, and began touching her.
The notion of consent never occurred to me as her tongue was ensconced in my throat more or less throughout, perhaps she told me to stop, perhaps I blacked that part out, but I had no clear recollection of any significant protest, at least so I told myself. At some point she decided she needed to vomit again, and that was the end of it (or so I thought).
On returning to school the following week I was confronted by her friend, one of my oldest acquaintances, who accused me of virtually raping her friend. I was taken aback and naturally rushed to defend myself, given that this old friend hadn’t been there and possibly couldn’t appreciate the circumstances, I maintained that I didn’t see it that way, but given that I was only fraction as drunk as the girl, I’d be lying if I maintained that at that moment I didn’t know better.
I did rape her. Despite her lack of protest, despite the degree of apparent enthusiasm, I knew that at no point was she in a fit state to issue informed consent. Ultimately I admit I took advantage of her and her situation. This is wrong and I deeply regret having done that to her.
What stays with me is how passive I was about the whole thing. You’d think I’d have shouted, or jumped out of the chair – dude touched my cock! – but I didn’t. And I thought that was instructive.
When I was 20, a friend and I took the dreaded lysergic, he returned to his apartment and told me to come over an hour later, which I duly did. When I arrived I found another friend with him. Acid kicking in, they informed me they wanted to have sex with me, I tried to escape, but given the psychological effects of the drug and not having a key to the only exit, I was in no state to either escape or defend myself adequately.
After what seemed like hours of running around the loft I gave up, succumbed, found a seat, which seemed like my best course of defense. I remained passive for the duration of what went down which ended up being a couple of hours until they got bored of my total lack of arousal. It was in no way physically painful and pales in comparison to what Craig endured, it was simply, in a word, humiliating. Subsequently I always reasoned that either it wasn’t that serious or that my lack of aggressive defence equated to a degree of culpability on my part.
For a long time it was just stored in my memory as ‘that thing that happened’ and it wasn’t until about five years after that I finally resigned myself to categorizing it as rape. I confronted the perpetrator, he apologized, somehow that will never be enough, just as my own admission above isn’t. But I guess the more these experiences are shared, the better these situations can be avoided. so thanks Emma for starting this thread, and everyone for being so candid, good on you.
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re: Ai Wei Wei- it must be hard struggling in the shadow of a more famous parent. It just goes to show, it's never too late to join the revolución.
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Sorry, I edited, recordari… I'll STFU.