Does Legalization Reduce Drug Use?
It has in Portugal.
Since July 1, 2001, all drugs including cocaine and heroine have been decriminalized in Portugal. Eight years later, consumption has decreased significantly. About half of the nearly 400 lives lost every year to overdoses are now saved.
Drug users had represented more than half of all new HIV cases in Portugal, or nearly 1,400 individuals infected annually. That toll has fallen to 400 per year, about 25 percent of the total.
So not only is the war on drugs a dismal, money wasting failure but it may also be responsible for higher rates of drug use. Or in other words, the solution is helping to create the very problem it’s trying to solve. No wonder conservatives love it so much.
Who In Their Right Mind Would Run Away From An Historic Legacy
Good grief, not this fucking shit again.
Changing the New Democratic Party’s name to the Democratic Party of Canada could be a brilliant move, according to a branding expert.
In my opinion, a party that changes its name in the foolish belief that it will lead to electoral success is a party that is out of ideas.
Rogue Polling
This might not be news to some of you, but Ipsos Reid’s polls consistently show higher support for the Conservatives and lower support for the NDP than every other pollster.
Unlike Paulitics I’ll risk a lawsuit and say the explanation is due to the fact that their polling methods suck.
In case you’re wondering what the wording of the question was, it asked if Harper should remain in government “because of the severe economic situation the country faces and the fact the Liberals and NDP have entered into an ‘unholy’ deal with the Bloc separatists.”
Yeah, that was Ipsos Reid that gave us that, cough, professional poll.
Ipsos-Reid actually used the word “unholy?” My, my, my…
On the name change issue, you are probably right: a party that can’t come up with anything better to attract new voters is out of ideas. Then again, it seemed to work out pretty well for the Alliance. I would support a change to something that is actually descriptive of what the party stands for (e.g. “Social Democratic Party”), but simply adopting the US Democrats’ name is pointless and dumb.
Actually, Devin, I think the NDP is out of ideas which is why this bullshit is being taken seriously enough to be debated in Halifax this year.
Way to go Portugal.
What would interest me now is crime stats related to drug use. Taking Edmonton for example: if you removed all the drug/gang murders there would be almost no murders in the city.
With the U.S. as our neighbours legal drugs are likely not in our future. Their prison culture might fall on hard times then.
Don’t these polls have a +/- 3% error rate. Which would mean that both Ipsos and the rest are statistically equal?
Don’t these polls have a +/- 3% error rate. Which would mean that both Ipsos and the rest are statistically equal?
Heh heh.
I see John Wright, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Public Opinion Polling, Ipsos Reid has commented over at Paultics. This time he, didn’t issue a libel threat, but wrote instead:
The author of the original false assertions need only fear being arrested and charged by the local police for being a moron–a much more serious offence because it’s obvious from these and previous raving’s that there is no chance of rehabilitation.
What kind of high school outfit is that, anyway?
I love it when the polico pundits argue about the validity of polling. It’s like arguing over which shade of grey is better.
No it isn’t. It’s more like arguing over whether something is really measuring what we think it’s measuring, which is always a concern with science and should be..
I have other problems with opinion polling, of course. The biggest being that they mostly serve to set the limits of acceptable thought with respect to a particular issue. The other problem is the overs-estimation of the value or worth of opinion among people who know nothing or very little about a particular issue. In that latter case, what the polls quite often are measuring is the effectiveness of the media in its ability to inform and to educate, or alternately, to propagandise.
None of this (with the exception of Ipsos-Reid’s unconscionable use of ‘unholy’ in one of its survey questions) is necessarily conspiratorial; it’s just something that’s never discussed often enough.
First of all, polling is not science. It is not random nor is it qualitative. It has never been a science. Junk science or pseudo-science maybe but we are starting to split hairs here. It is man’s attempt to put a number on something that is not quantifiably measurable all in the attempts of earning a buck. Like snake oil but with numbers.
People like numbers, they are hard, concrete and measurable. That being said, just because you assign a number to something, doesn’t make it any of the above. It’s all we’ve got though and the media needs to report something (see below). People like polls that reinforce their existing beliefs and reject those that don’t. Case in point, Robert. Polls are great for data mining. But do so at your own risk.
Secondly, it is NOT the job of the media to educate its readers. God forbid we ever place that much importance on them. The media is there to draw our attention to what they think we think is important in order to make a profit or push their social agenda. It’s entertainment. Maybe dressed up in the veil of self-righteous “duty” to inform but still just a dog and pony show trying to grab your attention and hold it until the next commercial.
First of all, polling is not science.
Yes it is. It’s science that rests on the foundations of population surveying and statistical analysis. If you can survey an entire population and are confident that you are measuring what you think you are measuring, it’s a very firm science. However, since you can rarely survey an entire population, you have to sample and use probability to indicate how likely your observations are true for the entire population. Errors can creep in and methodology can be disputed or outright manipulated, but that doesn’t have anything to do with its status as a science.
Stopped there. Not going going to bother with the rest. With you, it never ends I don’t know what you’re problem is, but you are too ignorant/deranged to waste too much time on.
Here here Ti-Guy.
Love you man.
John Wright
Ipsos Reid
PS: we do $200 Million a year in Canada in business, half a billion in North America and $1,5 Billion USD worldwide per year.
We must be doing something right.
Don’t lecture me on statistics and how they work. I know what it is and how its calculated.
Like I said, polling, not statistics, is junk science or pseudo-science. I can ask any set of questions on any topic and find some sort of mathematical interpretation from it. Doesn’t mean it’s anything. Polling is a marketing tool for the media. Suckers beware, oops, too late.
Don’t lecture me on statistics and how they work. I know what it is and how its calculated.
You obviously don’t. Polling is just another word for “population surveying” which represents the set of science-based techniques used to gather data about a population (which is a set of entities, not just people). Statistics are the methods used to process the data afterwards.
I’m not sure what you’re complaining about exactly. Polling can be and quite often is manipulative and misinforming, but any science can be used that way.
Anyway, was I right or was I right? You just never stop.
My gawd, I find myself unequivocally agreeing with zzzzzz’s opinions on polling!
So which one of us is it again that has come back from a brush with the dark side?
You weren’t right. Population surveying would be things like: average age, birth rate, range of income. Polling is measuring the subjective response to a subjective question defined by the pollsters yet pretends to represent a qualitative representation of the population as a whole.
If I take a shitty survey and use statistical methods to analyze it, I am still analyzing a piece of shit. It’s the GIGO principal. So again, statistics is science, polling is not.
Statistical survey:
Read the whole thing. If I cared about Wikipedia (which I don’t), I’d clean up that article, mind you. The first sentence is wrong. Information is neither quantitative nor qualitative. Data is. Information is data in context, and has meaning. Data by itself does not.
Polling is measuring the subjective response to a subjective question defined by the pollsters yet pretends to represent a qualitative representation of the population as a whole.
A “response” isn’t subjective. It objectively occurs, or it doesn’t. Same thing with “question.” Questions elicit either quantitative data or qualitative data. Quantitative data are things like height, weight, age, etc. Qualitative data are things like opinion or tastes. Both of those types of data are gathered with different survey methods, and both can be analysed statistically, but are subject to different types of statistical processing.
What you’re struggling with is the subjectivity of qualitative measurement, and that is indeed always an issue. The survey tool (the questionnaire for example) usually tries to eliminate as much subjectivity (or bias) as possible to make sure the response one is getting is indeed a measure of what one thinks one is measuring.
I didn’t realize you were such a champion of the polling cause.
“Information is data in context, and has meaning.” Not necessarily. Meaning is audience specific. See ‘data mining’.
“A “response” isn’t subjective”. Sure it is. Example: Q: Do you believe in giving money to other people? A: It depends. In other words, my answer is subject to the terms and parameters of the question. But unfortunately, there is no box to tick for “it depends”.
“Qualitative data are things like opinion or tastes.”. Very good. However, polling puts a quantitative value on opions or tastes which is defined by each respondant based on their own interpretation of the measurement scale. ie. “rank your approval on a scale of 1 to 10.” or even better is when they give you ambiguous choices like “very likely, somewhat likely, a little likely”.
This is all not to mention the bullshit extrapolations that get broadcast like fact For example, “Who would you rather have dinner with?”. There is no statistical relevence to this question no matter how you spin it.
Junk science or what people call “soft numbers” and quite simply accepted when it agrees with your own viewpoint and rejected when it doesn’t.