goddamn I've always loved this anthem. By far the best of all national anthems out there, really brilliant.

no *****

I've always been partial to this version:

Maybe Eversor would like Mike Pence as president so that we can have a theocracy, and ban both weed and porn.

thats the impression i get

I mean sure but there are like 500 things that should be dealt with before the negatives of marijuana. For instance the opioid crisis, and prison sentencing for marijuana position.

This would be better, but I think that ship has sailed.

Whataboutism.

Not true. I want Mike Pence as president so that we can have a theocracy, and ban sarcasm

https://www.predictit.org/Contract/7419/Will-Donald-Trump-be-impeached-in-his-first-term#data

lol

Donald Trump's a really bad guy, and yesterday it got easier for... 0% of the American public to acknowledge it?

I happened to stumble into a Reddit thread about the latest WoW lore. I was curious what was going on, even though I don't follow very closely. In the thread, somebody was complaining about how Horde have become genocidal and overly violent. Someone replied by pointing out how the Alliance has done indiscriminate killing before, as well. The first person said "that's just whataboutism!!".

Whataboutism has become a meme where any reply that mentions other things might be worth prioritizing is LITERAL SOVIET PROPAGANDA. Just like virtue signaling or a variety of other common political retorts, they can be applied so universally to any sort of counterargument they lose meaning.

45 cents, very fitting.

"they can be applied so universally to any sort of counterargument they lose meaning."

That can also be applied to whataboutisms, or to complaining about them, incidentally.

If you want a less meme-y version of my argument, the fact that there might be other things that are a greater priority doesn't mean that it's not worth talking about the complications of marijuana legalization. The opioid crisis might be a big deal, but global climate change is a bigger deal. Why should we talk about any other problem than that climate change? Because the fact that there are other more important issues doesn't render less important ones unworthy of discussion.

Anyway, that's about as far as I want to go, because youve forced our discussion about marijuana legalization into a metadiscussion. "There are other more important things to talk about" turned the discussion into a discussion about whether it was even a discussion worth having in the first place. Not interested in that. Not for a second longer.

There. Was that better than my one word response? Probably not.

I agree with your concerns about marijuana legalization.

All of it? Most of it? A little of it?

I'm not looking for approval here. It's nice to know that you agree, but it's not vindication (which also is not what I'm looking for).

For one, yes, I think there is a culture of people who do too much to play down the harmful side effects of marijuana. While it doesn't produce many acute symptoms, it fluctuates heart rate and blood pressure. Repeated use of chemicals which do that will take a toll on a person's cardiovascular system. Smoking anything, even if it's not carcinogenic, is bad for your lungs.

I agree that the full step to legalization is not the best idea, part of for the reasons you state. There are products like high content THC oil which can produce catatonic states, much beyond what natural marijuana would be capable of. Of course, there's not much evidence that this has overwhelmingly negative health concerns, but sociologically and psychologically this type of consumption for recreation is, all other things being equal, not desirable. And I do think people have not thought about this very much when advocating legalized marijuana.

This isn't reason in itself not to legalize, but I acknowledge they are things to take seriously and think about.

I'm not sure why you brought up the opioid epidemic as though access to marijuana correlates to opioid usage. Well, actually, they do correlate. It's an inverse correlation. States with legal marijuana correlates with lower opioid use. If people with real pain issues are choosing legal marijuana over opioid painkillers, then I think it's good that it's happening. That's true even if marijuana usage is not ceteris paribus desirable.

Otherwise, I'm not sure why you're picking a bone with marijuana in particular. There is a massive, massive, massive problem with addiction in modern society, and it's not limited to marijuana. Look up information on internet addiction (social media, phones, games), food addiction, gambling addiction, shopping addiction, or exercise addiction. Virtually any rewarding behavior has the capacity for addictive behavior. Some, like food addiction, are also driven by industry research and the social costs are staggering. Diabetes is estimated to cost the United States about $333bn/year. Other obesity-related diseases, such as heart disease, increase the numbers quite a bit.

It seems to me that allowing food companies to produce whatever kind of food they want and to produce disinformation about diet and health science are much more urgent than the social costs of marijuana legalization, when you consider that obesity kills hundreds of thousands of people per year. But, this is hardly ever brought up. Why? I think the reason this isn't part of the debate is because we have allowed extremely bad social institutions to become normalized. Marijuana, however, is new, so it's much easier to see the social costs. We remember life before marijuana, we don't remember life before companies marketed junk food to children.

All in all though I don't think legalized marijuana is a very big problem. I do agree with the concerns, but I'd fry bigger fish had I the choice. I don't see why I should be treated so hostile for thinking that and talking about it.

We should definitely consider what kind of a society promotes and accepts rampant addiction as tolerable so long as that addiction is driving consumer spending.

And yes, this is a long version of blaming capitalism, like Jon`C did.

As a side note, the corporate origin, proliferation and continued disinformation about the cause of the opioid crisis is evil enough to warrant recreating the Committee of Public Safety. It's tragic that people are dumb enough to blame Mexicans. The real problem is everything that is wrong with American corporate culture. The solution is deadly, the only question is for whom.

Well, for starters, it's topical. But I also care about the issue because it's affected people I am close to, and so it feels close to me. I live in a place with a lot of marijuana abuse, and some of my close friends are daily marijuana smokers. It's really upsetting to me, because my friends are way more interesting when they're sober, to put it euphemistically, and they aren't who they used to be. I also had bad experiences with marijuana when I was younger, and it's one of my biggest regrets in life. So I care about it, 1) because it's topical and has been in the news a lot lately and 2) because it affects me and people who I care about personally. You might not have these concerns, and I understand if you don't (and I'm certainly not telling you that you should), but I do. But people often are most passionate about issues that affect them personally (and, I'd argue, in most cases that's how it should be).

As an aside, I've had these conversations with some people in IRL, and people who know me well know that I've personal reasons to take the position that I take. It's very odd to me, though, that some believe that pointing out that my own experiences shaped my perspective on this issue is a way of undermining my arguments. Politics is an arena where people are supposed to pursue their own interests. And it's especially frustrating to me, because we live at a time especially where "lived experience" is supposed to be one of the things that give your arguments legitimacy. It seems that that principle is inconsistently applied.

Obviously, I haven't experienced these counter-arguments here, but I have in meatspace.



You've misread the situation if you think I was hostile to you because you don't think marijuana legalization is a high priority. I wasn't hostile to you, and I wouldn't criticize you if that was the point you made, because I agree.

It seems as if the marijuana industry's strategy has been similar to Uber's: ignore the law, just start up the business and start making money, and eventually be powerful enough that the government will have to accommodate you. One of the key differences is that it seems the marijuana industry has been more successful at convincing the public that it's benevolent than Uber.

I brought up the opioid issue as an example of how government is ill equipped to address social health crises. It's not hard to imagine a situation where legalization leads to marijuana abuse that causes public health issues, social problems, or accidental deaths, and the government is incapable of addressing it sufficiently. It's especially easy to imagine when the government appears to be doing fairly little to regulate the marijuana industry and prevent it from doing things that may make marijuana more harmful and addictive (or dependent, if you want to get pedantic about it).

Correlation, but at least according to one study, not necessarily causation:



https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/04/02/598787768/opioid-use-lower-in-states-that-eased-marijuana-laws

I don't see why there has to be a "real" problem. Fentanyl-related overdose deaths surpassed the number of overdose deaths from prescription opioids in 2016. The illicit drug trade is an issue, and one facet of the larger opioid crisis. I don't know why someone is "dumb" for saying that. (But tell me again how people are being hostile to you?)

Somehow European countries have managed to remain capitalist societies without having crises like the opioid crisis. It's, in part, because they restrict many of the specific marketing practices that have contributed to the crisis (such as marketing oxycontin as a non-addictive drug despite it being highly addictive, or going to doctors and giving them financial incentives to overprescribe the medication). You don't need public ownership of the means of production to address these issues. You need to address rent-seeking behavior on an ad hoc basis with regulation.

Doctors are not being bribed into over prescribing. My guess is that the opioid epidemic is due to street availability Fentanyl, which is super dangerous. Apparently the danger actually increases the appeal, because there are a lot of very stupid addicts.

Billionaire charged with bribing doctors to prescribe opioids
5 [New York] doctors charged with taking kickbacks for fentanyl prescriptions
Rhode Island doctor gets 4 years in prison for taking bribes to prescribe opioids
Opioid manufacturers pay US doctors speaking and consulting fees... the more opioids they prescribe, the more they get paid
Fentanyl spray manufacturer paid 126 doctors at least $50,000 for prescribing it, according to whistleblowers
British Medical Journal: Even a $13 meal paid by pharmaceutical company, a common practice in the US, increases opioid prescribing




NIH: 86% of injection drug users initiated by friend, family, personal prescription opioids

I'm not interested in individual cases. I'm don't doubt that there are cases of illegal bribery, just as I don't doubt that some doctors knowingly write prescriptions for addicts just to defraud medicaid. I'm talking about the popular idea there that doctors are being manipulated into over prescribing opioids with legal kickbacks. A lot of journals are willing to publish whatever hot garbage that comes in their door that nominally supports that idea, just because it's trendy to get up in arms about it. You can't look for a correlation and say, "Oh boy, that proves it, case closed!" I mean, take that CNN article, for example. Obviously doctors that work more with opioids are going to be more likely to act as consultants. That's not evidence of anything. If you need a consultant on opioids, you are going to go to someone who actually works with them.

I intentionally left my other post a little short in the hopes that someone would link to the JAMA study that was referenced in the paywalled BMJ article you linked to. I don't know why the BMJ felt the need to paywall an article about someone else's study, but that 13$ figure is a reference to a study published in JAMA. But here's the thing. It's bull****.

Here's some actual scrutiny of that study.
http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2018/07/21/are-doctors-bribed-by-pharma-an-analysis-of-data/

They basically glossed over the massive variance of their data, and cherry picked until they found a data set they fit their thesis. For example, they focused a lot on the fact that (on average, with a massive variance) doctors who accepted more free meals from opioid manufactures proscribed more opioids. They also conveniently left out that if you look at non-meal payments the same way, there isn't any similar trend. Oh, and just for fun, the treated the number of prescriptions as normally distributed instead of log normal. This resulted in them claiming that physicians that accepted any kind of payment in 2014 wrote 539 +/- 945 prescriptions in 2015. I'm not sure whether I'm more impressed that they had the balls to submit that figure, or that it slid through peer review without comment.

Also, it turns out that the number of opioid prescriptions have an almost identical association with meals accepted from companies that don't sell opioids.

You know, people are saying that Trump mentioned this thing about South Africa in order to energize his base and consolidate support. But I'm wondering if he's really just trying to change the media's attention, and get it to stop focusing on the Cohen/Manafort news. It's a smokescreen.

Whatever. Speculative bull****. I haven't seen anyone suggest it. Obviously It doesn't really matter.

I don't think a view being "trendy" means there's anything false about it.



It could also be that pain management consultation is a largely unnecessary feature of American medicine. Remember what pain medication should be used for: to cover up the symptoms. It's not a treatment. My suspicion is that a variety of health institutions have stopped working to treat the underlying causes of pain. Since physical therapy and whatnot are expensive, it's cheaper for insurance and more profitable for drug companies to give them pills.

What I'm saying is the fact consultants exist doesn't argue against the idea that some doctors overprescribe, in fact it may be evidence of just that.



Just because someone pointed out a few issues they had with a study doesn't mean it's "bull****", nor does it mean the conclusion is false.

I've shared that exact experience. It's unfortunate to split ways with friends over their interest in drugs.





I suppose at one point I desensitized myself towards these issues. I appreciate that you're experiencing this personally.



Government in general can and has treated social health crises very effectively. I'm not sure where that impression comes from. Consider the Portugese model.

What it depends on is whether you can educate politicians and the public on what strategies of tackling these crises are actually effective. It also requires convincing them to craft the proper legislation and actually govern. Or, locally, to get city councils to spend tax money wisely.

Public health crises are complicated issues that require careful thought and analysis to answer. What I mean in specific is people who try to recast the problem as that of foreigners trying to pollute our streets with drugs. It then becomes a problem of border security and enforcement instead of a public health issue. And all of the evidence suggests enforcement is the wrong way to approach the issue.



European regulators are more effective than American ones. It's just truth.

I'm fine with a social democratic solution, but what you're saying is that the government needs to intervene against social ills caused by free market practice. It's a more left-wing approach than what's actually done.

What I wrote was misleading. I meant our government.

I hate to invoke Godwin's Law, but when it comes to what Jon`C linked something needs to be mentioned.

People really ought to read The Banality of Evil. There is very important perspective in that book about 20th century society. Specifically, it's about how people's psychology interacts with bureaucratic institutions when those institutions are producing evil results.

When these companies are actively encouraging doctors to prescribe opioids and downplay the risks, they are doing something evil. However, it's very much an Eichmann kind of evil. They aren't pulling triggers or handing over heroin to people. (One typical Eichmann excuse, "I wasn't pulling the trigger") They're speaking to nice doctors and promoting less pain. On some level, if they reasoned through it, they'd realize the base statistics of it. If the doctors do prescribe more opioids, and do so more assured that the opioids aren't that addictive, they're probably going to produce more addicts. However, they never meet these people. To them, addictions are numbers on paper. They can easily distance themselves from these actions; they're ephemeral.

This is the tragedy of modern society. Our brains are the brains we had from life 20k years ago. We have a hard time processing things that effect people down the line, dealing with numbers and distant causes.

What the holocaust teaches us is that this psychological truth can be harnessed to produce the worst evil mankind is capable of. Worse yet, if you agree with the Nuremberg trials and executing SS officers for their role, we have created a new moral paradigm. And that's a paradigm that says people are all still culpable for the moral outcomes of a bureaucracy if they have a hand in it. Even if their actions are distanced from the results and they believed in the morality of their actions, it's insufficient to not hold them to account.

Pharma companies are not Nazis, but the doctor-pharma manipulation system relies on this same psychological characteristics of humans. So if you ask me who's more evil, the person getting doctors to prescribe more and prescribe carelessly, or the Mexican smuggling a backpack full of heroin over the border, I put much more responsibility on the person talking to doctors. History and proper moral reason demands it of us.

The problem is, this is effing hard to reason through. It takes time and mental effort. The same brains for 20k years ago have an easier time grasping "bad man with stick" than "a large chain of individually self-maximizing people leads to undesirable outcomes". This is why Trumpism wins, because it's literally stupid. It's easier to project the cause of these issues on something more visceral to us. That's honestly why I think Trump sounds like he's "being honest" or people had the impression he was "speaking truth". It's because the dumb level he speaks on, and the emotions he appeals to, are just easier to grasp. It's, quite literally, in the most neutral way I can say it, dumb.

By the way, in regards to Obi_Kwiet's post, doctors in Germany prescribe lots of opioids too, but they don't have nearly the amount of opiate addiction America does. A big part of this is more solid awareness among doctors about the risks, better information about how to identify patients who are developing addictions and methods to ween them off. I believe Germany is also better about treatment, but I'm out of time so I can't look any information up.

I think it's indisputable that industry-funded "research" that opiates are low risk for addiction is a big part of why opiate addiction today is so high. There's a reason academics are extremely skeptical of who funds research and especially industry research. It's because of things like this.

Incidentally, that's also true of how the identity-centric left deals with complex sociological analysis. Often racist outcomes are not conscious, but by the dumb logic of bureaucracy. However it becomes much easier to substitute in individual "privileged" people as a representative for the abstract reasoning. It becomes "bad man with stick" once again over reasoned analysis.

I wonder if Hannah Arendt would've come to same conclusions about evil if the person on trial wasn't someone who had the bureaucratic distance from his crimes that Eichmann had, and instead was someone who had much closer proximity to murder, such as the guards at Auschwitz (or whatever else, I don't want to write anything colorful or provocative right now, but I think you know what I mean). If that were the case, she may have come to very different conclusions about the nature of evil.

When it comes to comparing the conditions that made the opioid crisis possible to the Nazi bureaucracy (lol), I don't know if doctors are quite analogous to Eichmann. I don't know what they would be analogous to. Either way, I think the comparison points to a significant difference in the two contexts. Which is that people put their trust in the expert opinion of doctors on weighty matters, such of which are matters of life and death, and that, sometimes, doctors choose to forgo their professional responsibilities for the sake of monetary gain. They don't have vast levels of bureaucracy standing between them and the people they harm when they make that decision: they deal with their patients directly, and they make the decision to harm their patients despite the fact that they know them personally. Big pharma bureaucrats have emotional and psychological distance from the moral consequences of their decisions. Doctors don't nearly as much.

Which kind of goes to my point that it's a little suspect to talk about one thing as if it's the "real" problem. There are a lot of things that had to go wrong and a lot of people making bad decisions for us to get where we are on the opioid crisis. You can talk about "structural" issues, but ultimately that's preferring a lazy monocausal explanation to one that actually acknowledges the complexity of the issue and subsequently that is on the way towards addressing it.

Maybe, but that's probably a watered down definition of "social democratic". Really, I think it's a liberal approach. It's probably turning to clock back to the consensus position before the Reagan administration, or something like that. I don't think it's quite as radical as you're making it out to be (and I don't see why it matters whether it is)?

Heh so speaking of antisemites, what do my socialists friends here think of Jeremy Corbyn these days? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6087783/Jeremy-Corbyn-said-British-Zionists-no-sense-English-irony.html

Ooof, that headline is like, a lot to handle. Typical Daily mail headline, I guess.

But yeah, Looks Bad™.

I'm not sure what that comment is supposed to imply. The issue is that he's treating Jews as alien to English culture, right?

His remarks are being interpreted in many ways, but one of the harshest interpretations sees him as saying that even Jews that have lived in England their entire lives have not assimilated into British culture, which sounds an awful lot like racial, antisemitic tropes about Jews being incapable of assimilating or being intrinsically foreign and different. There appears to be the implication that British Jews' Britishness is somehow at odds with their Jewishness, and that they are subsequently irreconcilably "other".

And then there's also the setting of the remarks.