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Comment by skyyler | Hacker News Reader

>“In the U.S. the current landscape of marijuana legalization in adults adds a complex layer to the issues of adolescent marijuana use. As more states continue to legalize recreational marijuana, the accessibility and perceived normalcy of the drug may increase, particularly for adolescents who may view its legal status as an indication of safety or acceptability,” said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D.

Interesting to read this in an article about how marijuana use has gone down in the time since legalization efforts have started to see success. It almost seems comically out of touch.

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This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d...

Alcohol and other drug use, teen pregnancy, and sex in general have been declining in teens in the West for more than a decade.

> Alcohol and other drug use

Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like.

Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint? Yeah, nevermind any of that I guess. Meanwhile, Singapore will gladly imprison or execute you for possession of cannabis[0], but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity.

From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc, and while I'm not saying those issues aren't important, I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx251p55le8o

> Seems like a small thing but it's really not: I appreciate your use of "alcohol and other drugs"; the phrase you'll hear 99% of the time is "drugs and alcohol", where alcohol tries to avoid being lotted in with people using drugs they don't like.

"drugs" often means illegal drugs in colloquial use while alcohol is legal in most places, so the distinction has a use.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer.

I wonder what's your motivation for such an extreme exaggeration. The article you linked quite clearly states that the "punishment" for consuming is a 6 months rehibilation which, while quite harsh, is very far from your claim of death penalty. You need to possess 500 grams of Marijuana to get the death penalty which is like a 1000 or more joints.

I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis. Nobody is going to overdose on it, almost nobody is going to make a business of it if it were actually legal, ... this isn't a heroin, meth or even moonshine operation we're talking about.

Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this? Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

> I think it's crazy to be sentenced to death for having 500 grams of cannabis.

I think it's a bad law, but surely not as bad as you originally tried to mislead people into believing.

> Is there really a way to overstate the insanity of state-sponsored killing people for this?

Apparently yes, by intentionally making a false claim that you get executed for smoking a joint.

> Please let's not stray too far from the subject of, what justification for killing this drug user are you looking for?

They won't get executed for being a drug user, but for trafficking drugs. Given that 500 grams is a huge amount, I think it's reasonable to consider the offenders to be drug traffickers (even if I don't agree with the punishment).

This response reads to me as, at best, a bad faith intepretation of hyperbole.

It seems very obvious why someone could get worked up over demonizing a relatively benign psychedelic over literal poison that is responsible for myriad health issues and daily violence.

If you can't meet in the middle and actually discuss the substance of the topic rather than nitpicking their comment, why comment at all?

It is not bad interpretation, it is accurate interpretation. Hyperbole is valid thing if you are not trying to use to to sneak in false facts.

In this case, it was attempt to sneak in lies.

Who cares? You're missing the forest for the trees. Alcohol is still legal and kills thousands (millions?) times more people. If we can't discuss that, being correct has no value. If the only thing you want to contribute is to point out a lie, why have the conversation in the first place? It's just wasting everyone's time.

Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion. Pointing out lies serves to facilitate discussion. Why is that controversial?

> Not lying is a basic precondition to have a reasonable discussion.

No, it isn't. Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any. Third, you're perfectly capable of communicated despite this, and certainly more than pointing out a disagreement over facts. Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement and don't appear willing to discuss the bulk of the commentary?

Meanwhile, "good faith" actually is a precondition for decent conversation.

EDIT: Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim. So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value. Eg https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

> Secondly, you're assuming malice where it doesn't appear there is any.

I take such an extreme case of misrepresentation / exaggeration as an attempt to mislead readers, which for me is malice.

> Why comment at all if you only want to point out disagreement

I didn't point out a disagreement, but a wrong fact.

> Meanwhile, googling "marijuana death penalty singapore" turns up way, way too many results for this to be likely to be an entirely false claim

Let me cite from the article you linked: "The man, ..., had been imprisoned for seven years and convicted in 2019 for trafficking around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of cannabis" - how is that strengthening op's case that you get executed for smoking a joint?

> So from my perspective you basically killed the conversation while contributing nothing of value.

I'm happy to discuss things once facts are settled. You're killing the conversation by this weird insistence that setting facts straight is wrong?

Why are you getting bent out of shape defending a death penalty for owning about enough weed to get a frat house hyped on bob marley? How is that not horrible?

Why are you responding to imaginary comments? If you want to make that argument, make that argument in the first place.

A single plant can easily produce 500 grams. In other words - you could be killed for growing one plant for your own personal consumption.

That's an extreme upper range for specific strains under ideal conditions which you aren't likely to achieve as a simple consumer.

It's certainly very easy to stay under this limit if you're growing at home. It's difficult to cross that threshold accidentally, for sure.

This is not true at all.

500 grams is roughly a pound. 2 pounds (or more) of trimmed flower per plant is very achievable growing outdoors with many strains (not autoflowers).

We're talking here about 500 grams of dried buds, the final product.

Yes, we are. 1-2 pound(s)+ (dried flower) is very easily achievable outdoors from a single plant with most strains. 4 or 5 pounds+ dried product from a single plant is not unheard of. Cannabis can get extremely large.

(this is actually inconsequential to the point of the article I just wanted to point it out).

but why do you have to impose your German Values on Singapore ? As far as I can tell Singapore is a sovereign country, and its people have their own agency. I'm sure autocracy works well for them - just as democracy works well for Germany. they're free to choose their own "medicine" to maintain social order.

Although they aren’t free to choose that if it’s an autocracy.

In the US many cannabis legalizations have occurred from voter ballot issues where the legislature has no control over the issue. Citizens collected enough signatures and took the issue directly to the ballot for voters to vote on, and the state was bound to implement the change as the vote dictates (see: Ohio).

Sure, maybe the hypothetical idea of forcing more democracy on a society that doesn’t want it is bad or something but it seems to me that Germans (and Americans) objectively have more self-determination over this issue.

The idea that it’s an acceptable local cultural value for citizens to not have input on what crimes should receive the death penalty doesn’t seem like a local cultural issue, seems more like a universal human rights issue to me.

Is this sarcasm? The entire point is autocracy doesn't allow the people to choose for themselves. The autocrat does. The autocrat likes beer but not weed, so one is a good time and the other a death sentence.

"From my German point of view, our nation has plenty of energy to protest what's going on in Haiti or Syria etc"

That's because your politicians can't really be blamed for Haiti / Syria etc. And it's not directly their job to fix it. So they're happy to speak passionately about it all day, and hopefully direct the populations attention away from what they ARE responsible for, and might be held accountable for. (This is the case in many Western countries, of course - not just Germany).

> but as usual alcohol gets a free pass. Absolute lunacy, complete lack of logical thinking capacity.

Alcohol doesn't get a 'free pass' in Singapore. It's taxed to high heaven and back, and alcohol consumption is decreasing in Singapore, too.

> I want to draw attention to how Singapore in particular somehow gets a pass for literal state-sponsored murder for smoking a joint instead of drinking a beer. It's absolutely no mystery why this exception exists: Singapore is rich.

Singapore does not 'get a pass' either. Case in point: your own comment that dragged Singapore into a completely unrelated conversation. Or the article you linked. Or the comments on the /r/worldnews subreddit on every article posted about Singapore executing someone for possession of cannabis. Or the many accusations of human rights violations levelled against Singapore, despite it being by far the safest and most secure seven hundred square kilometres on the planet.

> From my German point of view

At the risk of a slippery slope, I'm going to say: your German point of view also includes very delightful companies like Bayer, Rheinmetall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Heckler and Koch, etc etc, which all produce implements of various shapes and sizes expressly designed to do nothing but kill people. To me this seems a little bit hypocritical—it's not okay to kill drug traffickers because 'oh it's just drugs, think about their families', but it's alright to actually build and sell killing machines, because they're used to kill Russians or other brown people half a planet away. Your German point of view also includes allowing teenagers as young as 16 to partake in alcohol, which I find confusing, unless you clarify that you personally don't imbibe.

For the record, Singapore also has an arms industry, and in general Singapore has no qualms about its position on the world stage. Tiny city-state with very little strategic depth, it does what it needs for its survival. If it means putting drug traffickers and murderers to death, so be it.

And on a personal note, I neither drink alcohol nor consume recreational narcotics.

>>>> Do you know many people prone to beating their wives after smoking a joint?

I actually do know a person who did exactly that. Just because it isn't as prevalent as with alcohol doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

>>>> Cannabis is a known risk factor for schizophrenia, although the exact neurobiological process through which the effects on psychosis occur is not well-understood.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3927252/

You don't get the death penalty for smoking a joint in singapore. You get the penalty for being in possession of stuff like a pound of weed or an ounce of methamphetamine with the intention to traffic it.

Go read their laws. For the most part users just get forced into treatment. Not unlike in the Portuguese model of harm reduction.

You are wrong.

Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

The law is pretty draconian, and if societies with strong rule of law and stringent requirements for prosecution can execute innocent people for murder accusations it's pretty undefendable to execute people for presuming that the 500g of weed found nearby them was theirs and destined for trafficking. Which, still if provable is a barbaric outcome anyway.

> You are wrong.

> Just being near half kilo of cannabis can get you executed.

> There's something called 'presumption of possession for drug trafficking'.

You are incorrect. Following is a link to the law—verbatim—from the Singapore Statutes Online: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=Sc2-#Sc2-

Judges cannot sentence someone to the death penalty just 'being near half a kilo'. It has to be more than 500 grammes.

https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/MDA1973?ProvIds=P13-

Presumption of possession and knowledge of controlled drugs 18.—(1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control — (a) anything containing a controlled drug; (b) the keys of anything containing a controlled drug; (c) the keys of any place or premises or any part thereof in which a controlled drug is found; or (d) a document of title relating to a controlled drug or any other document intended for the delivery of a controlled drug, is presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have had that drug in his or her possession.

A friend leaves a key to a locker in your apartment. It has half kilo of cannabis. The cops find the key in your apartment? Toasted.

From your own quote, I emphasise:

> (1) Any person who is proved to have had in his or her possession or custody or under his or her control

So no, as much as you want to think of Hollywood-esque scenarios where a friend or some random plants a drug on you, which gets you the death penalty for being completely innocent, you actually get a lawyer and a trial in court where you can prove your innocence. Singapore does not do kangaroo courts. The prosecution needs to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you conspired with said friend to hide the key in your locker. And needless to say they also have to prove you had the knowledge that said key controlled access to narcotics.

And chances are, this has never happened in reality because drug traffickers into South-East Asia are an extremely close-knit group who in general don't go around handing 'drug locker keys' to their friends and random people on the street. The law exists to prosecute conspirators, not randoms.

I'm confused by this is exchange. Half a kilogram = 500 grams = (approximately) one pound. What is it you're disagreeing about?

Perhaps your nation should have more energy to protest what's going on in Germany.

One can have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of alcohol independent of its grouping with other drugs.

Alcohol doesn't get a pass because is it separated. Seems like you are placing excessive meaning on the distinction.

The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef", i.e. no distinction at all. I'm mostly preaching to the formal system choir on HN, I just don't think I'm being out there saying the phrase "drugs and alcohol" is no accident in trying to distance alcohol from general drug use. The name Marijuana itself was deliberately made up to have negative connotations [0]:

> The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use.[12] [13] The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marijuana_(word)

Like I said above, Im not arguing that alcohol isnt a drug, just that I think you are making way to big of a deal out of the phrasing.

Alcohol isnt viewed more favorable because it is held apart. It is held apart because it is viewed more favorably.

It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

One can argue that people should take alcohol more seriously, but coming at it from a semantic rationale seems silly.

>It is a distinction stemming from real world practice. You wont fail a drug test at work and be fired due to alcohol. You wont get shunned and kicked out thanksgiving for having a glass of wine.

it doesn't really work like that in practice though - there are plenty of 'drugs' that won't ruin your life or social-status, and they're not all listed separately like alcohol.

I'm a firm believer that the reason the linguistics that we now use came about was due to the legalities of the substances involved and the market action. Alcohol is big business, and legal -- so it deserves a distinction. That's about the singular distinction. The market was allowed to push phrases into the public purview, and luckily for them the phrases stuck.

During western prohibition it (alcohol) was called 'poison' or 'narcotic', or 'intoxicant' in the propaganda.

The google ngrams viewer verifies this suspicion; the phrase ' drugs and alcohol ' wasn't in (real) use until much later in American history.[0]

[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=drugs+and+alco...

Alcohol is by far the most socially accepted drug.

You talk about legalities and that returns to the same point. legalities are different because it is more socially accepted.

What about caffeine?

> The phrase "drugs and alcohol" (used 100-eps% of the time) in common speech implies a separation of alcohol from "drugs", the latter being a worse category.

I appreciate you posting this (even if it is terminology nitpick). The social connotations associated w/ verbally separating alcohol from other drugs hadn't occurred to me. I'm going to try to use this phrasing in the future.

The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect. Same goes for fermented fruit. Additionally even today it serves as a preservative and solvent. You cannot meaningfully eliminate it from use.

Meanwhile drugs were always understood as something produced for the specific purpose of getting high.

There's a distinction because these are in fact different things.

>The issue with alcohol is that it's present in a lot of foods in concentrations suffient to cause an effect

Which one ? The most common food I found are just soy sauce / vinegar and I hope people are not drinking a bottle of it per meal.

> This "distinction" is like saying "meat and beef"

People do say that they don't eat meat but they do eat fish.

Alcohol and other drugs completely makes sense in world where alcohol is legal and common while other drugs are not.

Do you give your own government a pass for supporting Israel's state-sanctioned murder?

Most Singaporeans support the death penalty penalty for drug trafficking: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/death-penalty-majo...

This is incredibly, even blatantly misleading. Singapore does not execute people for marijuana possession. It has executed a handful of heroin traffickers. Maybe worry about your own failed state before spreading lies about others.

A quick search for news articles will show you that Singapore does execute people for trafficking marijuana in rather modest amounts.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/singapore-death-penalty-drugs-exe...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65395390

Alcohol does not get a free pass in Singapore. Taxes for it are very high. For example the taxes for 700ml 40% liquor bottle is ~US$19

On one hand, jail time. On the other hand, 10 minutes of working to pay the taxes.

If the point of the policy is to make the society less dependent on drugs, this makes sense. It's difficult to outlaw what has been once legalized, so constraining the consumption by high taxes make sense while keeping the other drugs illegal.

> less dependent on drugs

There, you've done exactly the thing I was talking about! You're not actually talking about drugs in general, because that would include alcohol. You're talking about the drugs you don't like, and the use of language deliberately excludes alcohol from being a drug.

To me it's extremely obvious and deliberate, and I'm sick of alcohol trying to get a free pass among DRUGS.

Read again, my comment implies alcohol is a drug by saying "other drugs".

not just the West, really

in my very non-Western country, it's been years since I saw an adolescent with a cigarette. 20 years ago, non-smoking 13-year boys were a minority - I shit you not.

how many of them now vape though? in the US, if you look at vaping in adolescents, I would not be surprised to see an increase in nicotine users just in a different form.

Vaping was advertised as a healthier alternative to smoking, but it's actually a comeback of smoking.

Probably, but it is healthier.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion too fast. We don't know yet what consequences years of vaping unregulated vape can do.

So you think that the research is wrong?

I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.

Add the fact that, if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, the people selling the marijuana will now be forced to only sell to people 21+.

I’m not saying that this is the case as legal recreational marijuana sale prices in many legal states are high enough (due to taxes or artificial supply dampening due to restricting who can grow it and how much) to justify the existence of a black market, but if that was the case, I’d expect a drop off in youth usage.

I think this overstates the interest in drugs among Zillenials and Gen Z.

Most people in our cohort tend to follow a "you do you" philosophy that cuts both ways - if you choose to or choose not to partake in marijuana or alcohol, that's your choice.

Stuff like "marijuana" or "alcohol" isn't viewed as cool or uncool, it's just viewed as a yet another consumable like coffee or sugar.

Same way some people choose to cut down on coffee and others are coffee fiends, it's similar with booze and weed.

Personally, I find that older generations have an unhealthily polarized view on weed and alcohol consumption - they are split between the "weed cures everything" and "weed is the devil's lettuce" camps.

Heck, even this thread has tinges of judgement about how younger generations just don't care one way or the other about weed as if weed consumption is a core part of being young.

I guess I'm a zillenial, born 1998. I distinctly remember a time in highschool where I saw vaping (the flavoured cartridge kind) shift from cool, to just some meaningless detail about someone. I totally think this shift has stuck. You're 100% right in comparing weed in this context to coffee, that exact same pattern happened to vaping too.

It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic.

I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?

> It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic.

Exactly!

> I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?

That's my opinion as well, but I'm part of the Zillenial cohort as well so I'm biased.

>if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common,

It never is. The overhead from running a lawful business is way higher even before you start accounting for all the weed specific cost of compliance stuff.

That's not the case here in Washington state: legal weed is significantly cheaper than the black-market ever was, unless you want some high-end specialty bud you most likely couldn't have gotten at all back then.

Oh, it can be.

I live in MI and weed is really, really cheap here. I don't smoke, but I partake in edibles (I have MS and nerve pain that meds can't do much about). I can get 2000mg of edibles for 40 bucks. And that's without price comparing: That's just going to the closest dispensary near my house. And lots of places do penny/free joints with a very low/no minimum purchase.

We've had legal marijuana since 2018 up here in Canada, and from the statistics it looks like the market has almost caught up. The closest comparison I can think of is piracy and beginning of streaming wars (like Spotify and Netflix). Sure piracy is free, but a significant chunk of people started subbing for the services because of the convenience. If you'll only save about $5 per purchase, but have to get cash, arrange everything and etc., that might be just enough friction for you to just go to one of the billion stores nearby.

A conspicuous absence of black market for other herbal products such as tea and cilantro indicates that the edge of the black market over the lawful businesses isn't that great, if extant at all.

I think those are just not great examples. There are plenty of examples of black markets for legal things, including food stuff.

Example: instead of buying meat at a formal (as in, legal business that pays taxes, has the proper sanitary reviews, etc) butcher shop, its buying from a small producer who kills their own animals, or from some shady figure who kills other producer’s animals.

Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets.

The edge of the black market over lawful business ranges from small to huge depending mostly on how regulated the lawful business is and the costs of a physical location (think street sales of snacks right across from a shop that also sells snacks but also has to pay rent, utilities, taxes, etc).

"its buying from a small producer who kills their own animals, or from some shady figure who kills other producer’s animals"

That is a very marginal case. The vast majority of revenue in the meat business goes through the big corporations.

"Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets."

Oh yeah, if you burden the legal producers with extraordinary, punitive taxes, the black market unburdened with them can flourish.

>Oh yeah, if you burden the legal producers with extraordinary, punitive taxes, the black market unburdened with them can flourish.

That's exactly what most states, though apparently not Washington, do with weed.

Or, to take an even nearer example: consider alcohol. It's heavily regulated and taxed in the US, but what little bootlegging exists does so mostly as a curiosity, not as a way of getting cheaper booze.

It varies from state to state, but legal prices are comparable to black market prices in a lot of places. And the selection available in legal markets is beyond compare.

My parents actually used this as a strategy when my sister and I were teens 20+ years ago.

They casually offered that, as children of the '70s, there really weren't any drugs they hadn't tried, so if I was interested in any, I could just let them know and they'd get them and we could do them together.

Made it seem as uncool as humanly possible, so I never tried.

By the time our youngest brother was a teen, they'd gotten overconfident in their success and never made the offer to him. He eventually quit using, but it took 12 steps and a lot of time and effort my sister and I were spared!

lol, same thing happened to a friend with cigarettes when they were a kid.

Slightly different though - parents offered a cigarette during the time when they would say "Bleeeeech! this is horrible!"

I think it headed off the time later when they wouldn't be able to react in front of their peers.

I think it’s because there are less illegal weed dealers. Which means there are less people willing to sell to kids. Basically making it legal has made it harder for kids to get.

Vapes are edge and easy enough to get.

Weed is popular among millennials, which are now the “cringe” generation so there’s that as well.

Weed just isn’t as cool as it was before.

Yup. Hasn't been cool in Canada since legalization, but a lot of milennials still cling to it

weird implication that millennials only did it originally out of a desire to be cool, and are still doing it "to be cool"

some people just like it more than alcohol, wtf

I like it more than alcohol, but as a teenager it was definitely just to be cool.

It is not hard at all to find a 21 year old to buy some legally and pass it on for a small tip.

I think there's a bit more at play. Let's contrast with buying hard drugs like meth. If you want to buy meth, you have to figure out how to get in contact with the sorts of people who'll be holding it. That means hanging out where they hang out and blending in to the point they trust you. By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem.

In places where weed is legal, you can go into a store, buy some, try it, and if you decide it's not for you, just don't do it again. I don't use weed, but yesterday I walked into a liquor store to buy a stout beer I like. I didn't have to hang out and party with the clerk to get her to trust me enough to sell me my beer. I gave her some money, she handed me a shopping bag, and that's the end of it. That's what it's like buying weed from a dispensary now.

TL;DR if you don't have to hang out with drug dealers to buy drugs, you might be less inclined to buy more stuff from drug dealers.

> By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem.

Shortcut: go the biggest hospital near you and find the fast food joint nearest the ER entrance. The drug users discharged after OD treatment will gather there and the dealers find then.

You know, that's the kind of thing that seems perfectly obvious once you've pointed it out, but it wouldn't have occurred to me.

Yeah, I only know because I was the emergency contact for a close friend who overdosed. When picking him up I asked the nurse about a cheap place to eat afterwards and she warned me to stay away from the closest fast food joints lest he find a way to relapse immediately.

Well people don't go out looking for a Meth dealer because they suddenly got the idea of using Meth. It doesn't go like that. You go to parties with friends and they use Meth and they introduce you to it and eventually connect you to a dealer.

To add, dealers aren't referred to as "pushers" for no reason, either.

Good point. No one at a beer store has ever tried to talk me into buying more than I wanted, except maybe boredly pointing to some display and saying "we have X on sale if you want some."

>So you think that the research is wrong?

I think a poorly designed study can confirm pre-existing biases instead of actually test for anything.

Stating that "research suggests" something doesn't actually mean much to me anymore.

I'd love to know what research suggests that “marijuana legalization in adults can influence adolescent behavior through their perceptions of less risk as well as increased availability, both of which may impede efforts to reduce adolescent use.” The numbers this article is reporting seem to suggest the opposite.

I think the other person just mistook your point and thought that you were implying that marijuana use _hasn’t_ actually gone down.

I kind of think teenagers aren't into all the different boutique wines, and legal marijuana is sort of giving off the same "older people" vibe.

Weed and alcohol remain forbidden due to age restrictions. But anecdotally, I grew up in the 90's and 00's. When weed was outright illegal and alcohol was as it currently is. There was plenty of desire to get drunk among minors. Weed had some but very little presence in my area. Today the weed presence is much more on par with alcohol among highschoolers (or so I'm told) where I'm from.

> When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.

I believe drugs (incl. alcohool) are a considerably more complex habits.

Getting intoxicated have socially desirable outcomes (if one ignores the downsides), unrelated to unavailability. Some drugs like weed can also be part of rituals (e.g. "meeting and getting stoned").

Or it's legitimately harder to get. In high school we used to smoke weed because it was easy to get (friendly local neighborhood dealer didn't check ID) and very rarely drank alcohol because it was tricky to find.

I suspect the research is reasonably accurate, but you will always have someone voicing the position of safyism, caution, and whataboutism.

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