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Salt Fish posted:Prohibition has demonstrated that there isn't a meaningful correlation between the severity of punishment applied by the justice system and the reduction of use of a substance. Your entire post is based on this concept which is fundamentally, albeit counter-intuitively, false. In your hypothetical situation with nu-alcohol you'd end up with the worst of both worlds; a large prison population, an underground black market, and people still widely using it. This depends on the drug in question and the existence of substitutes. It's not going to be the same for all drugs - they vary widely in both the effectiveness of enforcement, and the danger that a given user can pose. Marijuana has no good substitute(JWH-xxx seem pretty poo poo), while theory-drug would in alcohol. Most people wouldn't use it because, as is often stated in this thread, the legal alternative is much easier/safer. You'd have a small prison population and not-wide use, whereas with legalization you'd have no prison population, wider use, and many more fatal car crashes.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:17
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:How come some people concerned about the effects of marijuana on the brain, but not other legal (by prescription) drugs, like amphetamines? Or even legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine? It makes no sense to me being concerned about the effects of cannabis, but not all the other easily available drugs that are out there. We can separate out the issues of legalization from encouraging use, though. First of all though, you're wrong about amphetamines and nicotine. Plenty of people are uncomfortable with how commonly Adderall is prescribed to children and young adults and look at all the controversy around selling e-cigarettes to see how some people, including medical professionals, react to nicotine. But generally, yeah, no one really wants to ban alcohol, but it's not like people want everyone to become heavy drinkers. It's a very legitimate position to say that yes, we should decriminalize/legalize drugs because prohibition isn't working, but we should also take steps to discourage their use and acknowledge that they can pose real harm.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:22
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Jeffrey posted:This depends on the drug in question and the existence of substitutes. It's not going to be the same for all drugs - they vary widely in both the effectiveness of enforcement, and the danger that a given user can pose. Marijuana has no good substitute(JWH-xxx seem pretty poo poo), while theory-drug would in alcohol. Most people wouldn't use it because, as is often stated in this thread, the legal alternative is much easier/safer. You'd have a small prison population and not-wide use, whereas with legalization you'd have no prison population, wider use, and many more fatal car crashes. This is flat out wrong. To the target market of your fake drug there isn't any substitute. If I want to drink at work I have to have that specific drug and I'm going to use it regardless of the laws. Prohibition has demonstrated concretely that strict laws don't reduce use. The burden is on you to demonstrate that prohibition has ever worked for any substance if you want to convince me that we shouldn't decriminalize all drugs (which we should). I don't advocate drug use and I hope that people choose not to use them. If we want to reduce use we need to get smart and start educating and regulating.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:32
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Salt Fish posted:This is flat out wrong. To the target market of your fake drug there isn't any substitute. If I want to drink at work I have to have that specific drug and I'm going to use it regardless of the laws. Prohibition has demonstrated concretely that strict laws don't reduce use. So in other words, marijuana usage will not go up at all in Washington or Colorado in the next year? I don't think that's a reasonable claim, even if it is clear that prohibition does not eliminated use. edit: I also don't think you can properly explain the rise of some of these weird and obscure designer drugs except that they're easier to obtain or considered less risky than scheduled drugs. Xandu fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 00:38
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KingEup posted:Overeating May Alter the Brain as Much as Hard Drugs http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-to-fat-eating/ quote:"We cannot distinguish any difference between the brain pattern of someone while gambling or ingesting cocaine," said Dr. Hans Breiter, a neuroscientist at Mass. General who previously monitored the brains of cocaine users. "And whatever areas are involved in addiction affects these regions." If you dig into the paper the only actual size changes are to the nucleus accumbens, which as I said earlier, is a highly generalized reward center that the paper itself acknowledges shows similar reactions in response to a wide variety of disparate drugs, meaning it's nothing unique about the biochemistry of cannabinoids that is causing this, it's a correlation with psychological habituation.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:46
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Xandu posted:So in other words, marijuana usage will not go up at all in Washington or Colorado in the next year? I don't think that's a reasonable claim, even if it is clear that prohibition does not eliminated use. I mean the Dutch don't smoke because they're fundamentally boring people but decriminalization in the Netherlands doesn't correlate with huge usage. I bet usage will go up in the short term in Colorado and Washington because of the novelty but I don't see evidence that this will necessarily increase long term usage.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:47
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TenementFunster posted:that would probably pass muster in CO, but what is the loving point if you need to have a person watching it remotely the entire time? Presumably there would be more than one being monitored. In regards to marijuana consumption affecting the brain's development- well i actually had several opportunities to smoke when i was younger i decided to only start at 21 along with alcohol consumption for these reasons. That and I'm a huge square. Lamebot fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 01:03
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Xandu posted:So in other words, marijuana usage will not go up at all in Washington or Colorado in the next year? I don't think that's a reasonable claim, even if it is clear that prohibition does not eliminated use. Ten years may be a better metric. The initial spike might level out, especially with an appropriately high sin tax.
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Apr 17, 2014 01:44
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Is there reliable data on how many people ingest it in some form in states where it's entirely illegal? I'd expect a small increase in usage but a huge increase in perceived usage as people feel more comfortable being open about it.
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Apr 17, 2014 01:51
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superjew posted:Is there reliable data on how many people ingest it in some form in states where it's entirely illegal? I'd expect a small increase in usage but a huge increase in perceived usage as people feel more comfortable being open about it. It's certainly not a trivial thing to measure, and even once it's legal on the state level not everyone will necessarily admit it, but there's various sources of data on it. At the highest end, you get states with ~15% of those 12+ admitting to using illegal drugs. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/NSDUH.aspx edit: Marijuana use in past year amongst 18-25 from 2011/2012. so I'm not sure that in this instance people are all that afraid to talk about it. 
Xandu fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 01:59
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Here are some choice bits from Drug War Facts that seem to indicate no clear connection between criminalization and use:124. (Use Rates and Decriminalization) posted:"In California and Ohio, surveys before and after decriminalisation showed that cannabis use increased, but not at a greater rate than in US states which had not decriminalised cannabis. Single (1989) also reviewed data from two large US national surveys of drug use in the 1970s that compared rates of cannabis use in states which had and had not decriminalised cannabis. He found that the prevalence of cannabis use increased in all states, with a larger increase in those states which had not decriminalised (Single, 1989)." 130. (Decriminalization and Prevalence of Use) posted:"Proponents of criminalization attribute to their preferred drug-control regime a special power to affect user behavior. Our findings cast doubt on such attributions. Despite widespread lawful availability of cannabis in Amsterdam, there were no differences between the 2 cities [Amsterdam and San Francisco] in age at onset of use, age at first regular use, or age at the start of maximum use." 131. (Decriminalization and Use) posted:"... our results indicate that the increase in participation was due to individuals over 30 delaying giving up cannabis use as a result of its changed legal status, not an increase in use by younger people. This finding provides an explanation of why US studies based on youth fail to find that decriminalization has an impact on the probability of cannabis use, while studies based on adults and youth, or just adults, do find a positive association between decriminalization and participation in cannabis use." 133. (Decriminalization and Use Rates) posted:"The available evidence suggests that removal of the prohibition against possession itself (decriminalization) does not increase cannabis use. In addition to the Dutch experience from 1976 to 1983, we have similar findings from analysis of weaker decriminalization (with fines retained for the offense of simple possession of small quantities) in 12 US states (Single, 1989) and South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (Hall, 1997; McGeorge & Aitken, 1997). The fact that Italy and Spain, which have decriminalized possession for all psychoactive drugs, have marijuana use rates comparable to those of neighboring countries provides further support." 148. (Effects of Cannabis Prohibition) posted:"Increased funding for cannabis prohibition has increased cannabis seizures and arrests, but the assumption that this reduces cannabis potency, increases price or meaningfully reduces availability or use is inconsistent with surveillance data the US federal government has itself collected." 154. (Effects of Prohibition) posted:"Prohibition has two effects: on one hand it raises supplier costs, disrupts market functioning and prevents open promotion of the product; on the other, it sacrifices the authorities’ ability to tax transactions and regulate operation of the market, product characteristics and promotional activity of suppliers. The cannabis prevalence rates presented in Figure 1 show clearly that prohibition has failed to prevent widespread use of the drug and leaves open the possibility that it might be easier to control the harmful use of cannabis by regulation of a legal market than to control illicit consumption under prohibition. The contrast between the general welcome for tobacco regulation (including bans on smoking in public places) and the deep suspicion of prohibition policy on cannabis is striking and suggests that a middle course of legalised but limited consumption may find a public consensus." There's more data, some to support each side (and obviously some good data to come in the next couple years; these are getting old), but that's what I found in a couple minutes of looking. 131 is particularly interesting. Of course most of this is just about decrim, and not legalization, but it's a start at least. IMO, whether the effects of policy on use rate is the most important issue of the legalization debate (for marijuana as well as other drugs), because if regulation can keep use at the same level as prohibition, than almost every argument against reform (e.g., the drug is dangerous) becomes a moot point. SurgicalOntologist fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 05:14
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SurgicalOntologist posted:IMO, whether the effects of policy on use rate is the most important issue of the legalization debate (for marijuana as well as other drugs), because if regulation can keep use at the same level as prohibition, than almost every argument against reform (e.g., the drug is dangerous) becomes a moot point. Regulation can reduce consumption even further than prohibition e.g. the percentage of 12th graders using tobacco is lower than cannabis: http://www.drugabuse.gov/monitoring-future-survey-overview-findings-2013 I have a question for the prohibitionists out there: is tobacco more or less accessible to teenagers? KingEup fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Apr 17, 2014 |
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Apr 17, 2014 06:29
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I'm pretty sure it's a lot harder to get tobacco as a teen than weed. Dealers don't check you for ID. edit: oops, not a prohibitionist. 
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Apr 18, 2014 10:51
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Really? When I was growing up there were always tons of stores that didn't check/had non-English speakers working them, and everyone in school knew where they were. Everyone smoked at parties, but only a few people had weed. Ditto for alcohol. Every other person had an older sibling/neighboor/parent that was willing to do runs for them, but only a few could get weed in the same way.
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Apr 18, 2014 11:52
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This Jacket Is Me posted:Really? When I was growing up there were always tons of stores that didn't check/had non-English speakers working them, and everyone in school knew where they were. Everyone smoked at parties, but only a few people had weed. Ditto for alcohol. Every other person had an older sibling/neighboor/parent that was willing to do runs for them, but only a few could get weed in the same way. My experience was the same as this. That was over a decade ago, so maybe times have changed. Marijuana is more popular now than it was back then. But my hunch is that people exaggerate the ease of getting weed as a teen. I'm sure it varies on a regional basis also.
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Apr 18, 2014 13:11
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Here in California, it's trivially easy. All you need to do is know someone who has a medical card or license to grow.
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Apr 18, 2014 15:07
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I mean, are people with medical cards or licenses as common as people with older siblings? I realize that things are different now than they were 5 years ago, and different in different regions, but is it really easier to get weed than cigarettes? Send a minor to 10 different gas stations or liquor stores and I bet he could find at least 1 that would sell him some smokes. Could that same minor convince 1 dispensary out of 10 to sell him weed?
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Apr 18, 2014 15:11
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Growing up in Massachusetts suburbs, it was definitely easier to get cigarettes as a teen. Weed vs alcohol is a harder question but cigarettes were used pretty openly in public by kids.
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Apr 18, 2014 15:21
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Weed (in places where it is illegal) is harder to get initially but once you find a guy, it's easy again, though not always available. For cigarettes it was as easy as finding someone pumping gas and asking him to buy you a pack. Ultimately it's easier to get something that is illegal for some, rather than illegal for all. In Colorado it will be even easier for kids to get weed now.
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Apr 18, 2014 15:32
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If the black market goes away in CO eventually, I don't know if that will be true. At least it's not true as a rule. Also in the MA suburbs, I could get weed as soon as I wanted to, but I couldn't get alcohol reliably until I was 19 or so (my oldest friends being about 2 years older than me). Obviously that's not going to be the case for everybody, but in short I do think illegal for some can restrict availability more than illegal for all, if it's legal enough to supplant the black market. I mean it's just a case of everybody carding vs nobody carding. If weed is sold in every single gas station and corner store (as is the case for cigarettes) that might increase availability enough to counteract that effect, but that's not going to happen.
SurgicalOntologist fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 15:43
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Alcohol (at least spirits) is restricted to special stores that card people on entry in many states so given that those are freely available (albeit less so than beer/wine) I don't think that weed would be much different.
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Apr 18, 2014 15:53
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What I'm saying is that in my experience weed was just as, if not more, freely available as alcohol. Of all forms--though where I grew up all alcohol sales were limited to special stores. I don't think is a universal or anything, but it's not a foregone conclusion that legal sales will increase access. It depends on lots of factors.
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Apr 18, 2014 15:58
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Anecdotal evidence is useless. Are there some reliable statistics that show the availability of marijuana vs. alcohol?
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Apr 18, 2014 20:50
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AYC posted:Anecdotal evidence is useless. Are there some reliable statistics that show the availability of marijuana vs. alcohol? Scroll down to trends in availability. 89% of 12th graders say alcohol is fairly easy or very easy to get, compared to 81.4% for marijuana. http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/13data.html#2013data-drugs Also cigarettes are easier for 8th graders to get than marijuana. 49.9% vs 39.1% Xandu fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 20:52
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Xandu posted:Scroll down to trends in availability. 89% of 12th graders say alcohol is fairly easy or very easy to get, compared to 81.4% for marijuana. It's interesting that most of these numbers seem to have gone down over time. The War on Drugs must be working!
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Apr 18, 2014 21:21
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Prof Lior Pachter from Berkeley (PhD in applied math from MIT) has uncovered at litany of flaws with the paper on cannabis and the brain published this week: http://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/does-researching-casual-marijuana-use-cause-brain-abnormalities/
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Apr 18, 2014 23:27
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[quote="KingEup" post="428490278"] Prof Lior Pachter from Berkeley (PhD in applied math from MIT) has uncovered at litany of flaws with the paper on cannabis and the brain published this week: http://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/does-researching-casual-marijuana-use-cause-brain-abnormalities/ Ahaha, what a bitchslap.
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Apr 19, 2014 22:31
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That poo poo study that was just insulted and ripped to pieces has basically already done the damage, and now casual use is enough to make a 20 year old , into a 90 year old Alzheimer's sufferer, because it's been cited literally every in the media that even mentioned weed as a topic.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:53
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Nonsense posted:That poo poo study that was just insulted and ripped to pieces has basically already done the damage, and now casual use is enough to make a 20 year old , into a 90 year old Alzheimer's sufferer, because it's been cited literally every in the media that even mentioned weed as a topic. I doubt it'll do much though since there'll be a fair amount of anecdotal evidence to the contrary coming out of the two states that have legalized and I don't think there's a serious legalization push anywhere else since California delayed.
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Apr 20, 2014 18:59
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Xandu posted:Scroll down to trends in availability. 89% of 12th graders say alcohol is fairly easy or very easy to get, compared to 81.4% for marijuana. Too bad the study doesn't include where kids obtain alcohol. I suspect alcohol is easier to obtain by kids because it can be stolen from their parents. Laws and regulations won't stop careless parents.
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Apr 20, 2014 20:09
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size1one posted:Too bad the study doesn't include where kids obtain alcohol. I suspect alcohol is easier to obtain by kids because it can be stolen from their parents. Laws and regulations won't stop careless parents. There's a lot of states where there's multiple ways for under-21s to legally consume alcohol: http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591 10 states allow kids to be served at bars so long as their parent is with them!
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Apr 20, 2014 20:13
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size1one posted:Too bad the study doesn't include where kids obtain alcohol. I suspect alcohol is easier to obtain by kids because it can be stolen from their parents. Laws and regulations won't stop careless parents. Probably, and when some of those careless parents buy marijuana you'll probably find a significant uptick in availability.
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Apr 20, 2014 20:15
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computer parts posted:I doubt it'll do much though since there'll be a fair amount of anecdotal evidence to the contrary coming out of the two states that have legalized and I don't think there's a serious legalization push anywhere else since California delayed. Alaska is voting on it in August.
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Apr 21, 2014 01:59
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HuffPo has a list of most likely contenders for 'next state to legitimatize the devil weed'
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Apr 21, 2014 05:12
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Cautiously optimistic about Alaska's initiative this August. 2016 will probably see California and Massachusetts legalize. Unsure about the rest. TBH I can't see it happening in any state without a ballot initiative, since politicians are so far behind on this issue.
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Apr 21, 2014 05:31
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KingEup posted:Prof Lior Pachter from Berkeley (PhD in applied math from MIT) has uncovered at litany of flaws with the paper on cannabis and the brain published this week:  A dose-response "curve" whose lovely p-value comes almost entirely from a single outlier in the 2-joint group. Dr. Breiter is a NIDA stud 
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Apr 21, 2014 05:31
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My super liberal family who has past (positive, mainly) experience with marijuana is already talking about how the super strong weed in Colorado is making people "go crazy" and jump off balconies or shoot their spouses.
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Apr 21, 2014 13:48
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AYC posted:Cautiously optimistic about Alaska's initiative this August. You have more faith than I do. The referendum is being held during the primaries of an off election year where at the federal level its the Republicans who are holding a competitive primary. This is not an election that will see marijuana's fans turn out.
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Apr 21, 2014 14:09
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Any time I see an MRI study, I assume until its demonstrated otherwise that they did something funny with the statistics. It's actually a weak point in the peer review system, that once dubious methods get entrenched in a sub-field, it's really hard to fix it since they are all reviewing each others papers.
KernelSlanders fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 21, 2014 16:03
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According to this, peer review is kind of useless in general, it's certainly no substitute for proper replication.
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Apr 21, 2014 16:08
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