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Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

arstechnica.com

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Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#491

Post by AngryData »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #453
bluejekyll wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary reason to legalize isn’t to make it easier to do drugs, it’s to not use the justice and court system for dealing with addiction problems. Our goal should be to legalize use and then take the money saved from police enforcement and funnel that into programs that get people off drugs. In the US an issue is that the latter part is part of the healthcare system, and we all know that has a lot of issues in ser…

Several states have tried that. Some have already repealed the laws because they were a disaster.

In numerous places those efforts have been purposefully sabotaged by police who aren't happy about the loss of court revenues and the eventual cutbacks on police funding for drug prohibition. With them literally refusing to enforce some laws like public intoxication or shooting up heroin in the middle of the street because their more profitable and super easy to get arrests for drug possession laws no longer existed.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#492

Post by directevolve »

righthand wrote: post #468
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several states have tried that. Some have already repealed the laws because they were a disaster.

When this happens the reason 90% of the time is usually not because the program wasn’t working but the opposition to the program has made sure to either gut the funding or put in measures that makes those programs not work (only hiring 2 people to handle all the work or excessive operating requirements. Cops will fight tooth and nail against social programs because it reduces their budget when problems are solved. Lo…

In Portland, decriminalization was poorly planned, new treatment options were implemented badly, and the alternative penalties for possession were not meaningfully enforced. It was a failure of execution.

I don’t think it tells us much about how well an ideally functioning decriminalization or legalization effort would work. It does update us in understanding that it’s difficult to accomplish this transition successfully.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#493

Post by vouaobrasil »

pnut wrote: post #488
vouaobrasil wrote: post #6

I wonder if the new drug of choice is actually technology. In some ways I think that the addiction to technology has some similar mellowing effects as drugs. Some research indicates that smartphone addiction is also related to low self-esteem and avoidant attachment [1] and that smartphones can become an object of attachment [2]. The replacement of drugs by technology is not surprising as it significantly strengthens…

I like this idea, but we are nowhere near a point of diminishing returns. We are about to experience the wholesale obsolescence of the economic value of human labour, which means in practical terms, no stupid jobs just to have a place to live, intelligent robots cleaning your house etc If anything, buckle up. Going surfing every day or crotchet may become a perfectly legitimate life aspiration.

> just to have a place to live, intelligent robots cleaning your house etc

Animals could say precisely the same thing about living in a zoo!

(1) Who determines the allocation of resources in your utopia? How do you handle an ever increasing population that depends on the biosphere which itself is the only source of raw materials and energy for the incredible amount of energy required for it?

(2) People need a purpose. Most people will find a life of really doing nothing quite boring. Like it or not, people want some control over their destiny, and not to be animals in a cage.

(3) If people really don't need each other, what will happen to the social fabric? If AI can really do everything for us, then what is to stop some people from killing all the rest and taking everything for themselves? We have only relative morals that function when they are necessary, and some people not even that.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#494

Post by lfmunoz4 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #286

It says what but fail to explain the why. Some hypothesis in the comments about technology being the new 'drug' for teenager so they don't seek drugs, some other about how now everything is recorded so they can't go nuts, ... I don't buy it at all For me it's just a cultural shift, it's no more cool to be that guy that smoke weed or is drunk. That's all.

Might be a projection, i.e, you think teens do drugs to be cool. My group of friends we were legit curious read books like The Doors of Perceptions where we thought we would meet God or Aliens travel to astrospace. Any recent books like that? That made teens curious about drugs?

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#495

Post by ANewFormation »

Simultaneously, pharmaceutical use rates have skyrocketed and continue growing. I'm curious if there is a causal relationship there.

And I don't think this is a positive trend. Teens experimenting with weed, alcohol, and so on should not be encouraged but is, or was, just a part of life. Teens being on antidepressants, prescribed stimulants, and so on is rather quite sad.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#496

Post by ghaff »

iteria wrote: post #483
ghaff wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, though that would surprise me a bit. My first personal webpage was probably around 1996 or 1997--and I assume that was fairly early for that sort of thing. As I said, I had been using BBSs for a while and also accessed usenet and FTP sites somewhat later. (I would have only had access from work to the Internet for quite a while.) For most people, it probably wasn't until MySpace and the like and the populariza…

AOL. In the late 90s, I was in the chat rooms, by the early 00s me and my friends would swap between AIM and text messaging depending when texts were free. Kids definitely had an online presence, but it wasn't like the mid-00s and after when social media rose up.

I wasn't in instant messaging until I was an analyst in the 2000s. Never had an AOL account outside of being IM I used for some subset of mostly journalists. So, yeah, didn't really communicate with social contacts with email/IM until the 2000s for the most part.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#497

Post by directevolve »

macpete42 wrote: post #469
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several states have tried that. Some have already repealed the laws because they were a disaster.

Works for Portugal since forever

We really don’t know that, they had terrible data reporting on drug use before the policy was implemented so we can’t even make a before/after comparison. We also can’t parse out the extent to which changes in drug use stats reflect changes in autopsies or in cultural attitudes and candor about drug use affecting self reports.

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#498

Post by WalterBright »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #425
tremon wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with them having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use. But isn't this a false correlation, then? Were they destroyed by drug use, or by the daily misery of their ghetto neighborhood?

Spot on- so many social problems get attributed to everything but the economy and inequality. If we could make our system more equitable, then we would not have such desperation.

What happened with the tremendous social spending by the government?

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#499

Post by MikeRichardson »

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #451
speakfreely wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First-time home buyers are getting squeezed by a combination of peaking market forces, but those forces are peaking and we're probably seeing the worst of it at this moment [1]. It will get better. [1] https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-i-dont-inv...

Their arguments for "won't go up much" are reasonable but their arguments for "will actually fall enough to allow two generations to finally own homes" are pretty fucking nonsensical. They're comparing to hosting dips in the world wars and while I assure you ww3 will have enough loss of life to make houses quite cheap a third time, you still won't want them because they'll be covered in radioactive contamination. The…

> code

I quite like the parts of the code that prevent random electric shocks, and the parts that keep the roof from caving in, etc. (I assume you meant building codes)

The forthcoming mass deportation will definitely fuck shit up though. UK is having a similar issue due to Brexit. I guess Eastern Europeans are to the UK, as Mexicans/etc. are to the US?

Re: Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

#500

Post by tomrod »

herval wrote: post #472
tremon wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with them having seen people close to them destroyed by drug use. But isn't this a false correlation, then? Were they destroyed by drug use, or by the daily misery of their ghetto neighborhood?

I think poor people in the US are against legalization mostly due to the decades of “war on drugs” propaganda or other forms of conservatism (eg religion), not because they’ve seen people close to them being destroyed by drug use

These same sources also mistake causality, as many folks with mental health issues self medicate, rather than having drugs be the absolute source for mental health issues. Example: Cleon Skousen.
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