The outlawing of cannabis

[jimboston]

I very much doubt if drunk driving is the sole, or even the largest, part of the 'harm to others' equation.

I never said, suggested, or implied it was the sole cause of ‘harm to others’ in the equation.

If you read my posts I speculated that it (i.e. drunk driving) was the largest component, and wanted to see if that could be broken out... the logic being that the drunk driving component may be moot in 20years with self-driving cars.

I rarely deal in absolutes, as I understand the world doesn’t generally conform to absolutes.

If I had to guess, I would say wife-beating is the biggest component. Like you, however, I haven't read the study.

That guess is a fine guess. You may be right. You may be wrong. It’s a guess.

Unlike you, I'm willing to keep an open mind.

Well that unfair.

I mean, neither of us have read the report so we’re both speculating. I’m defending my opinions/thoughts yes, but i’m Not doing so rudely or insulting those who are disagreeing with me. In fact I suggested earlier (to mookie) that perhaps my life experience is different, we see different things and that’s coloring our opinions.

You’ll see in your next sentence you bring up you own life experiences as evidence.

I’m hoping for an apology.

As a former cab driver, I've seen a staggering number of crimes committed by drunks, everything from aggravated assaults down to common vandalism. I don't see much of what happens after they reach their destination and the door closes, but the stories that have reached my ears are pretty alarming. And quite often, two hours after I drop a guy off, I'll happen to be driving down the same street and see the same guy on his front lawn with three cops sitting on his back. I'm not privy to the details of why, but I'm sure it's not because they're collecting unpaid parking tickets at four in the morning.

I don’t doubt ANY of what you’re saying.

What I suggest is that because of your job you are seeing a lot of the same type of ‘drinkers’.

Firstly... for every person who drinks and stays out till 2am at the bars... how many people drink socially and rarely go to bars, and when they do that don’t close the place?

I’m guessing there are a LOT more people who rarely or never see are bar but who do consume alcohol.

Or people who abuse it when they’re younger and outgrow it. I’ll take my own personal experience here as a guide. In my 20’s I regularly closed bars. In my 30’s I may have done it rarely. Now I never do it. If i’m In a bar at night it’s with a buddy watching a game. Last time I went ‘out on the town’... 3+ years ago for a Bachelor Party, where I was kinda playing the role of ‘elder stateman’ and babysitting my nephews.

... and then, even though I did likely ‘abuse’ alcohol in my 20’s. I never became violent because of alcohol. I wouldn’t beat my wife or kids, period, and no amount of alcohol could ‘make me’ do it.

So breaking it down you got;
*People who abuse alcohol and then cause harm /get violent.
*People who abuse alcohol and don’t cause harm or get violent.
*People who consume socially/regularly but don’t really ‘abuse’ it.
*People who drink moderately.
*People who really don’t drink at all.

That top group I think is pretty small compared to the next three groups.

We don’t need to worry about people who don’t consume at all, as that’s not really part of the conversation.

My premise therefore is that it’s really a small group who cause the hard.

My further premise / speculation is that these people are assholes to begin with; and though alcohol may contribute to bad actions in the moment it’s not really the ‘cause’... the ‘cause’ is that these people are assholes and violent and would find something else to blame for their actions if they couldn’t blame alcohol.

Now... one final thing... I’m NOT saying there’s NO harm. I’m also NOT saying that alcohol doesn’t contribute. I’m just speculating as to the underlying cause and trying to parse out the idea that the study is biased.

Now... I may actually go read the study.

[jimboston]

Why would you remove drink driving? In the report the level of harm each drug causes to society and to the user is calculated on a per user basis.

I guess you didn’t read my posts.

... but you expect other to read the complete report.

Interesting.

Most of your points about drink driving appear to be written on the assumption that the 'damage to society' score was calculated as gross total damage done by all alcohol users, rather than on a damage per user basis. But I might be wrong.

I posted the report because at least one of you guys was interested to see how damage was being defined and the report lists the definitions.

I appreciate the link.

I assume it’s gross damage and not per-user damage. Per user damage makes no sense. One person can drink his entire life and never cause any harm... another person can be a kid who’s only been drinking for a year, but he kills 4 in a drunk driving accident. I don’t see how you could balance these on a ‘per user’ basis. Then again I don’t have a Masters in Statistics either.

... and back to the drunk driving... my point there...

Well obviously that causes significant ‘damage to society’... I’m just saying that factor only became an issue in the early 1900’s, and could disappear in 20 years. That’s a big factor, but only a factor in this 130-150year period.

[jimboston]

The method of this study is dubious...

Method:
“Members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, including two invited specialists, met in a 1-day interactive workshop to score 20 drugs on 16 criteria: nine related to the harms that a drug produces in the individual and seven to the harms to others. Drugs were scored out of 100 points, and the criteria were weighted to indicate their relative importance.”

Basically these ‘experts’ scored the harm based on their ‘opinions’. It doesn’t appear they used ANY actual data!

[jimboston]

from the link...

The issue of the weightings is crucial since they affect the overall scores. The weighting process is necessarily based on judgment, so it is best done by a group of experts working to consensus. Although the assessed weights can be made public, they cannot be cross-validated with objective data.

... also...

so our results are not necessarily applicable to countries with very different legal and cultural attitudes to drugs.


Basically alcohol was guaranteed to be the most harmful because it’s more prevalent.

This study is useful as a point of conversation... but that’s where it ends.
By it’s own account the ‘data’ and ‘measurements’ also all subjective.

[mrswdk]

1) Yes that weighting process is fairly shaky and non-replicable

2) It is per user harm, not gross harm. You can see that from where the report talks about harm to ‘the individual’.

[Dukasaur]

I very much doubt if drunk driving is the sole, or even the largest, part of the 'harm to others' equation.

I never said, suggested, or implied it was the sole cause of ‘harm to others’ in the equation.

If you read my posts I speculated that it (i.e. drunk driving) was the largest component, and wanted to see if that could be broken out... the logic being that the drunk driving component may be moot in 20years with self-driving cars.

That wouldn't change the essential thrust of the study. Since it compares the relative harm of various drugs, safety improvements such as self-driving cars would be equally applicable to all drugs. They would eliminate most of the harm from driving while drunk, they would eliminate most of the harm from driving while on shrooms, they would eliminate most of the harm from driving on amphetamines, etc., etc. The relative ranking would remain largely unchanged.

I rarely deal in absolutes, as I understand the world doesn’t generally conform to absolutes.

If I had to guess, I would say wife-beating is the biggest component. Like you, however, I haven't read the study.

That guess is a fine guess. You may be right. You may be wrong. It’s a guess.

Unlike you, I'm willing to keep an open mind.

Well that unfair.

I mean, neither of us have read the report so we’re both speculating. I’m defending my opinions/thoughts yes, but i’m Not doing so rudely or insulting those who are disagreeing with me. In fact I suggested earlier (to mookie) that perhaps my life experience is different, we see different things and that’s coloring our opinions.

You’ll see in your next sentence you bring up you own life experiences as evidence.

I’m hoping for an apology.

Maybe I was needlessly harsh. You seemed to be banging the gong in a very strident fashion, but I was skimming, so my perception could have been skewed. If I misinterpreted your attitude, I apologize.

As a former cab driver, I've seen a staggering number of crimes committed by drunks, everything from aggravated assaults down to common vandalism. I don't see much of what happens after they reach their destination and the door closes, but the stories that have reached my ears are pretty alarming. And quite often, two hours after I drop a guy off, I'll happen to be driving down the same street and see the same guy on his front lawn with three cops sitting on his back. I'm not privy to the details of why, but I'm sure it's not because they're collecting unpaid parking tickets at four in the morning.

I don’t doubt ANY of what you’re saying.

What I suggest is that because of your job you are seeing a lot of the same type of ‘drinkers’.

Firstly... for every person who drinks and stays out till 2am at the bars... how many people drink socially and rarely go to bars, and when they do that don’t close the place?

I’m guessing there are a LOT more people who rarely or never see are bar but who do consume alcohol.

Or people who abuse it when they’re younger and outgrow it. I’ll take my own personal experience here as a guide. In my 20’s I regularly closed bars. In my 30’s I may have done it rarely. Now I never do it. If i’m In a bar at night it’s with a buddy watching a game. Last time I went ‘out on the town’... 3+ years ago for a Bachelor Party, where I was kinda playing the role of ‘elder stateman’ and babysitting my nephews.

... and then, even though I did likely ‘abuse’ alcohol in my 20’s. I never became violent because of alcohol. I wouldn’t beat my wife or kids, period, and no amount of alcohol could ‘make me’ do it.

So breaking it down you got;
*People who abuse alcohol and then cause harm /get violent.
*People who abuse alcohol and don’t cause harm or get violent.
*People who consume socially/regularly but don’t really ‘abuse’ it.
*People who drink moderately.
*People who really don’t drink at all.

That top group I think is pretty small compared to the next three groups.

We don’t need to worry about people who don’t consume at all, as that’s not really part of the conversation.

My premise therefore is that it’s really a small group who cause the hard.

My further premise / speculation is that these people are assholes to begin with; and though alcohol may contribute to bad actions in the moment it’s not really the ‘cause’... the ‘cause’ is that these people are assholes and violent and would find something else to blame for their actions if they couldn’t blame alcohol.

Without getting into a philosophical debate about proximal versus ultimate causes, it's true that alcohol alone does not cause bad behaviour. Still, all of us are capable of bad behaviour. Alcohol and other drugs tend to exacerbate those tendencies. What the OP suggests is that alcohol contributes to a great deal of bad behaviour, and many other drugs contribute less. My experience tends to bear that out.

It's true enough that the urge to kill/assault/rape/rob/steal/defraud someone comes from inside you, but different chemical cocktails make it easier to bring that urge to the surface. If all behaviour is ultimately the interaction of various chemicals in the brain, it would be very surprising if adding foreign substances to the mix didn't modify behaviour.

[jimboston]

That wouldn't change the essential thrust of the study. Since it compares the relative harm of various drugs, safety improvements such as self-driving cars would be equally applicable to all drugs. They would eliminate most of the harm from driving while drunk, they would eliminate most of the harm from driving while on shrooms, they would eliminate most of the harm from driving on amphetamines, etc., etc. The relative ranking would remain largely unchanged.

It would significantly change the relative ranking depending on the weighting and how much the ‘harm to others’ is impacted by drunk driving verses something like violence.

Since the study is essentially opaque and they aren’t using real data we can only speculate how much of a factor DD is verse other violence. I think it’s pretty obvious drunk driving is a problem... but I don’t think there are a ton of meth heads getting behind the wheel of a car. So if automobile’s were removed due to self-driving cars the ‘harm to others’ for alcohol would drop a bunch... but the ‘harm to others’ for meth or heroin not so much.

I apologize.

Thank you.

It's true enough that the urge to kill/assault/rape/rob/steal/defraud someone comes from inside you, but different chemical cocktails make it easier to bring that urge to the surface. If all behaviour is ultimately the interaction of various chemicals in the brain, it would be very surprising if adding foreign substances to the mix didn't modify behaviour.

I agree. I’m definitely not saying there’s no harm. I think it’s likely there’d be a drop in domestic violence if alcohol disappeared tomorrow.

I also don’t think domestic violence would go to zero.

So my hypothesis here is that some percentage of domestic violence that happens is ‘blamed on’ alcohol, but that the violence would occur anyway, so to ‘blame’ it on alcohol is not really helpful. Let me reword it... and i’m going to make up some numbers, but these numbers may not be right so i’ll use variables if I can make it sound right...

Let’s say for every 100 instances of domestic violence the police report that A number involved alcohol (i.e. at least one participant was intoxicated), and NA number had no-alcohol involved. So let’s guess 80 times alcohol was involved. So then if you did this study you would attribute 80% of all Domestic violence to alcohol.

Now, let’s pretend God came down and wiped alcohol off the face of the Earth, and made it so we could no longer manufacture alcohol, and we no longer craved it either. It was like it never existed.

So then you’d expect an 80% drop in domestic violence right?

.... but i’m saying that the drop would be less than 80%.

because some percentage of the 80 cases out of 100 (A) that involved alcohol would have still happened. Maybe they would have been different. Maybe they would have happened at a different time.... but some percent would still happen.

... guy comes home and he’s been drinking, but not plastered.... guy is violent dick anyway.... wife gets in his case about mowing the lawn or spending time with kids or fixing something or money problems or whatever.... guy smacks wife up. When the police come this gets reported as “A” alcohol involved.

In our imaginary world...
... same guy comes home, not drinking (because alcohol is gone) but tired... guy is violent dick...wife gets on his case about whatever... guy smacks wife up.

Now you can debate what % this would be... I’m not saying it’s a majority.... it may not even be a big percentage... but even a 10% swing is significant.

[jimboston]

1) Yes that weighting process is fairly shaky and non-replicable

2) It is per user harm, not gross harm. You can see that from where the report talks about harm to ‘the individual’.

That’s not what that term means in the context of the study. Harm to the individual is harm to the drinker himself. Harm to others is harm to all people/society.

Did you even read it?

[mrswdk]

1) Yes that weighting process is fairly shaky and non-replicable

2) It is per user harm, not gross harm. You can see that from where the report talks about harm to ‘the individual’.

That’s not what that term means in the context of the study. Harm to the individual is harm to the drinker himself. Harm to others is harm to all people/society.

Did you even read it?

So you think harm to the individual is measured in terms of the harm one user does to themselves, but harm to others is measured by total harm all users do to the society?

[jimboston]

1) Yes that weighting process is fairly shaky and non-replicable

2) It is per user harm, not gross harm. You can see that from where the report talks about harm to ‘the individual’.

That’s not what that term means in the context of the study. Harm to the individual is harm to the drinker himself. Harm to others is harm to all people/society.

Did you even read it?

So you think harm to the individual is measured in terms of the harm one user does to themselves, but harm to others is measured by total harm all users do to the society?

First of all, NOTHING in this “study” is measured.

It’s a group of (I think 20 or 22?) people creating a ranking and a weighting on their own. In no case does this “study” use measurable data.

Secondly, the way you word your question makes it sound like your assumption is correct, but tha’s just not the case.

Harm to the individual is harm to the one person drinking, how that one person is hurting themselves.

Harm to others is the harm that the one person drinking is causing to society.

This doesn’t mean it’s “per user” harm. Not every individual drinking causes great harm to society.

... what is NOT defined by the study is how they get this number...

I think that people here AND people doing the study don’t think about the casual drinker having a beer or two... they focus on the people having 6+ out at a bar. So because of this focus they overweigh the impact. There’s no one out there measuring total consumption, per person consumption, and the impact differences.

Last night I had two 16oz cans while watching the B’s lose.

I stayed up a little later, because of the game more than the beer, so I hurt myself there, and consumed the calories of two cans... so that was bad. I don’t think there is really much other long term negatives for my body. The body can process a moderate amount with no ill affects.

I was home, so didn’t drive or go out or cause any harm to society.

The B’s lost and I was mildly disappointed... but even though I drank 2 beers I didn’t consider throwing the remote at my TV or even being loud enough to wake my kids or wife. Then I went to bed.

I woke up at the right time and have proceeded with my day the same as any other.

How is my experience, and the experience of the VAST MAJORITY of those who consume alcohol like I did last night, factored into the study?

It’s not.

[mrswdk]

Harm to the individual is harm to the one person drinking, how that one person is hurting themselves.

Harm to others is the harm that the one person drinking is causing to society.

This doesn’t mean it’s “per user” harm.Not every individual drinking causes great harm to society.

A 'per user' or 'per capita' figure is an average. America has a 'per capita' murder rate of 5 murders per 100,000 population but that doesn't mean every US resident murders 0.00005 people each year. It means some murder 1 or more people, but most murder 0.

No one is claiming that every or even most alcohol users will get in their car and kill a family of four at some point in their lives.

I think that people here AND people doing the study don’t think about the casual drinker having a beer or two...they focus on the people having 6+ out at a bar.

The guy who wrote the article in OP and who is one of the authors of the Lancet study I posted above (David Nutt) is a professor who specialises in researching the psychological effects of drug use. I think he and the others involved in this study are probably experienced and intelligent enough to be aware that they need to compare these drugs based on equivalent levels of usage. The study doesn't explicitly state that they did so, but unless proven otherwise I think it's fair to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

You're right that the study could do with being more open about its methods and does appear fairly subjective, but you seem to be making a lot of fairly sweeping assumptions about what the authors probably did and basing your criticism on those (not very fair) assumptions.

I was home, so didn’t drive or go out or cause any harm to society.

It's a side point but even one beer has been proven to have significant effects on an individual's depth perception and spatial awareness. There was some experiment I saw a while back where professionals bus drivers who'd had literally one pint of beer ended up trying to drive their bus through two cones that weren't quite far enough apart for the bus to fit through. If you had gone out driving last night you would have been markedly less competent behind the wheel than you would be today, sober. That's why drink driving laws (in the UK at least) prohibit driving after you've had almost any amount of alcohol whatsoever, not just driving after you've gotten completely shitfaced.

[jimboston]

I think I’m just not fully explaining myself properly.

The bottom line is the study makes a lot of assumptions and the graph doesn’t really clearly explain what they’re measuring.

Are they saying the “harm to others” is per person regardless of whether you drink or not? That’s what you seem to be stating when you say “per capital”. If that’s the case the graph is designed to be biased looking... because significantly more people drink, so yeah there’s gonna be more “harm”, not factoring out for usage.

It’s just not clear.

I will say. I agree with the basic premise that marijuana and magic mushrooms are less harmful than most people think, and alcohol is probably more harmful than most people think... and the laws does not accurately / or always reflect the true potential harm of these substances.