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Wag
 
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maslow (2/11/2008)
The majority of voters are over 50, and I just cant see them going for legalize it idea!The zero tollerance ethos, maybe.................:-) Depends on the question. Which is an issue with the current government.... Ask the Average fifty year old. "Should drugs be illegal?" They'll say yes. Say "does that include alcohol, its more dangerous than cannabis, causes more crime daily and causes long term mental health damage." and theyll decide otherwise... strange huh... We dont like asking the correct questions... it provides answers that are useful. Like. "Do you want a windfarm in your back yard?" "No." Big suprise huh.... ask "We are building a new powerstation in your back yard would you prefer it to be fossil fuel powered, a nuclear facility or wind powered...." Well hell people go for wind powered every time.... amazing! I think the debate has got confused here. We shouldnt talk about the de/criminalisation of all Drugs, they are clearly in a different category from each other depending on type. The thread is about cannabis. Which is currently demonstrably less of a threat to people than alcohol. The question is why is one illegal when the other is not.
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Heroic Knight
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| Alcohol was invented by monks, right? Jesus himself drank the vino but Im sure (ish) he never smoked a fattie! Its much harder to take a percieved right away from people once its established. USA tried prohibition and it didnt work. People died and went blind from the moonshine and the mafia made huge profits.Usa also tried taking prisoners tobacco away, big riots followed. Cannabis has been in popular use only recently when compared to alcohol, so the education about cannabis is lagging. Also past education i.e Just Say NO! wasnt helpfull or informative. I feel it is becoming apparent that alcohol is the far more dangerous of the two drugs, both in the immediate and long term , in its effects. However, I feel that cannabis will never be legalised fully. Has the goverment just took the age of smoking up to 18? Most bars now have a policy that you need to look 21 or be gone. Advertising bans are in place, with how and when alcohol is allowed to be marketed.I just dont feel that there is going to be a U turn, which is what legalization may be seen as by some.
Give me what I want and maybe no one gets hurt
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Wag
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Andy Rimmer (2/11/2008)
I've never seen any evidence of scientists deciding what cancer treatments get used in our hospitals-ultimately those decisions are made by politicians (in governments-or working for them in the case of NHS Trust officers),
Ironically my brother is a chemist who retrained to become an economist. (I haven't decided if I'd class that as a scientist or not, but the work he does looks fit for purpose so I suspect they probably are.). Specifically he retrained as a health economist the key aspect of which is to rigorously analyse health data to see what treatments are cost effective and which aren't. Although he regularly ends up pulling his hair out because he has to deal with elected politicians or their appointees, fundamentally he wouldn't have a job (or I suspect an MSc) if there wasn't some science involved in the process of deciding what treatments get used in hospitals at some level.
As to the straw man argument- maybe it's a poor analogyhow does experimenting on rats, dogsand monkeys give better evidence than direct testimony based on personal experience when discussing effects on human beings?
Well it's because the animal tests are done under double-blind testing regimes, in a ruthless and systematic drive to eliminate all anecdotal evidence so that you can get some real data and actually learn something. Whereas personal experience is anecdotal, so it's pretty useless. I think we're just going round in circles here.
If it's the only method of making decisions that you have, then it's a lot better than the alternatives. For instance reading newspapers makes you more stupid (because you anecdotal evidence is "better" (more representative) than the impression created by newspaper reports). But it's not better than going off data collected in well designed intelligent experiments whose goals include eliminating personal bias and removing the bias caused by anecdotal experience.
Human subjects in lab conditions are always going to behave, feel and therefore react differently toa subject who is experiencing something as part of their normal life.
It's certainly true that some experiments are currently beyond our means to administer effectively. In which case anecdotal evidence may well be the best we have. I see this more as a case for despair than anything else though.
As to years of painful lessons- science is based on years of anecdotal evidence and scientists who've fudged data to match results so it's hardly a reliable source of wisdom is it?
And yet the rockets go up and the astronauts land on the moon. Science is done by scientists and they're human, so they're vulnerable to all the flaws and weaknesses of any human being. A major one being that their ability to collect data and draw conclusions is hampered by anecdotal and experiential evidence. When they get it wrong, the rockets blow up and everyone dies. It's a sad thing when scientists act in an unscientific manner. But to imagine that the imperfections undermine the whole thing is to fundamentally deny the fact that we're surrounded by a thousand examples of effective, productive science every moment of every day. So yes, science really is a reliable source of wisdom. It's not perfect, but it's better than all the alternatives. Bar none.
The fact that science (or more correctly scientists) has failed time and time again by allowing themselves to be influence by anecdotal evidence with the net result that their data and conclusions were wrong does not seem to prove that anecdotal evidence is better than "scientific" evidence.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Flannel (2/11/2008)
I think the debate has got confused here. We shouldnt talk about the de/criminalisation of all Drugs, they are clearly in a different category from each other depending on type. The thread is about cannabis. Which is currently demonstrably less of a threat to people than alcohol. The question is why is one illegal when the other is not.
This is a fair point and I apologise for the diversion which may well have been my fault. However I think the fact that all of the arguments in favour of legalizing cannabis can be applied to other drugs as well is a reason why cannabis cannot be legalized. Once you accept evidence and start basing your ideas on logic instead of dogma then you start feeling obliged to carry on the policy across the whole area. I think some politicians are intimidated by the prospect of evidence-based policy and where it might lead them (legalizing drugs) so they reject it in favour of policy-based evidence instead.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Prodigal
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| I think the point about anecdotal evidence (god I hate that phrase) is that while a scientific approach works while with a question with a quantifiable answer, it's not so good when we start trying to solve social problems which tend to not be quantifiable. So while scientific research into the effects of cannabis are essential, it is not the only type of evidence we need to make a decision. People's experiences and how theyf eel about them are actually much more useful when looking at an issue like this (and also when dealing with the side issue which distracted us-sorry guys, it was Marios and me, not Matt- which was that of belief and it's ability to affect reality, because again it can't actually be quantified). I think the argument that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol is to say the least dodgy. The jury is still out on the long term effects of Cannabis but we do know that it hits every button a drug user wants hitting (whereas others generally hit 1 or 2 at best) which is bound to be a factor for dependancy and the drug's mythology of harmlessness means that users- especially younger ones- tend to overdo it. You can't OD on Cannabis but you do develop tolerance so the amount you can smoke before you have a "whitey" or just fall asleep tends to creep up along with the costs and then the criminal side of things starts to have an effect. It's important to look at Cannabis use Holistically because it's not just the physical , or the psychological, or the social effects- it's all of them combined to varying degree in each person that makes this such a difficult issue to deal with.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (2/11/2008)
However I think the fact that all of the arguments in favour of legalizing cannabis can be applied to other drugs as well is a reason why cannabis cannot be legalized. Hmmm well biological addictiveness and actual physical biological harm cannot be applied to cannabis as a drug. These issues are present in crack cocaine for example or methamphetamine. So theres a solid reason for declassifying one and not the other. Mind you following this logically would of course lead to a greatly entertaining situation where tobacco was banned and cannabis wasnt.... which would be amusing. Possibly there would be a resurgence in tea and cake. Of course 'Cake' can be a problem too if anyone remembers that Brass Eye programme. Once you accept evidence and start basing your ideas on logic instead of dogma then you start feeling obliged to carry on the policy across the whole area. I think some politicians are intimidated by the prospect of evidence-based policy and where it might lead them (legalizing drugs) so they reject it in favour of policy-based evidence instead. A fine point. I suspect your right sadly... I am still unsure what it is about down-grading that takes the police so very much longer to deal with than it did before it was downgraded. However the Police (well actually certain politically motivated police officers) seem very sure that declassification has produced some kind of crime wave and paperwork nightmare that didnt exist before. They are teriribly unwilling to say what it is though....
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Prodigal
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Flannel (2/12/2008)
Matt Pennington (2/11/2008)
However I think the fact that all of the arguments in favour of legalizing cannabis can be applied to other drugs as well is a reason why cannabis cannot be legalized. Hmmm well biological addictiveness and actual physical biological harm cannot be applied to cannabis as a drug. I'm not sure that's true-like I said the Jury's still out. But it's being accepted in the field that the difference between addiction and dependance is of no practical value- most of my colleagues who specialise in this area treat(not in the medical sense) cannabis as another addictive substance because it has the same capacity to fuck up someones life as heroin, alchohol or crack, and apears to be just as hard to give up. Oddly tobacco- despite it's high level of addictiveness and general poisonousness never seems to get the same notoriety (but then most drugs workers I know also smoke).
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Wag
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Andy Rimmer (2/12/2008)
I think the point about anecdotal evidence (god I hate that phrase) is that while a scientific approach works while with a question with a quantifiable answer, it's not so good when we start trying to solve social problems which tend to not be quantifiable. So while scientific research into the effects of cannabis are essential,it is not the only type of evidence we need to make a decision.
I wouldn't say "not so good", I'd say comletely fucking useless. Science is hopeless for answering questions like "Should we legalize or ban this substance?" or "Is it harmful?" It's like trying to use the principles of good drama, creative writing and imaginative metaphor to solve a simultaneous equation.
You're right that science is great for producing quantifiable data. Science is good for answering questions like "by how much will smoking 20 fags a day reduce my life expectency" and that's the sort of thing anecdotal evidence is useless for. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had with people about the dangers of smoking that include the unforgettable "Yeah well Uncle Albert smoked 10,000,000 a day and he lived to be a trillion so that proves it's not as bad as people say". Having a conversation where anecdotal evidence trumps scientific evidence is like having your teeth pulled without anaesthetic.
Science is useful for establishing the actual facts that you can then have a debate over. But it can't then be used to answer moral questions like "Should we ban this" or "Which is more harmful, criminalization or cancer". For that you absolutely need the input of people with experience and insight and judgement. Namely experienced professionals and elected politicians. I just wish there was a debate being had and it was over the evidence, in the case of drugs I can't see any evidence at all that that is the case.
I think the argument that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol is to say the least dodgy. The jury is still out on the long term effects of Cannabis but we do know that it hits every button a drug user wants hitting (whereas others generally hit 1 or 2 at best) which is bound to be a factor for dependancy and the drug's mythology of harmlessness means that users- especially younger ones- tend to overdo it. You can't OD on Cannabis but you do develop toleranceso the amount you can smoke before you have a "whitey" or just fall asleep tends to creep up along with the costs and then the criminal side of things starts to have an effect.
The problem with this is that you're trying to use evidence-based policy. Which is fine, but if you go down that line, the logical conclusion is to try to be logical...
Cannabis is currently an illegal drug supplied in many different ways, so I suspect that makes it very difficult to really compare it's effects with drink. It would be like drinking booze but you never know whether the next pint is beer or vodka. Is it more harmful than booze? I suspect low grade cannnabis used lightly is less harmful than drinking a bottle of vodka a day and using the more potent strains of skunk is more toxic than drinking a few beers every week.
However the science is very clear that tobacco is enormously addictive and very physically destructive to the body. So | | | |