Time To Change The Law On Drugs?

[Roger Mexico]

50 minutes ago, jackwhite said:

As with all of these surveys, it's likely heavily skewed.

Most people won't bother responding to it, as the numbers show. This is an emotive subject, but usually amongst those that use cannabis or have some interest in it. Then only those with strong feelings against it may bother to seek it out. Those would likely be a minority, admittedly.

As I said above, this looks to me like a very good survey technically.  If you read the section of methodology, they sent out to random households (the person with the next birthday was supposed to fill it in) and controlled and weighted for all the obvious variables - age, sex and so on.  A response rate of 36% is very high for this sort of procedure (they expected 25% and even that would be high in the UK) and much higher than you would get in a 'normal' opinion poll. A number were weeded out, mainly for not filling in enough (75%) of the survey.

The 'raw' sample has some minor biases (a little too male, a little too white, too many retired people and possibly too well-educated) but these will have been corrected for in working out the final percentages.  And there's no sign in the replies of those responding being limited to those partisan on the topic.

[Passing Time]

2 hours ago, jackwhite said:

As with all of these surveys, it's likely heavily skewed.

Most people won't bother responding to it, as the numbers show. This is an emotive subject, but usually amongst those that use cannabis or have some interest in it. Then only those with strong feelings against it may bother to seek it out. Those would likely be a minority, admittedly.

Whenever something comes up concerning cannabis you only need to have a quick squint on the comments to 'weed' out the stoners! Easy arrests for plod there if they went around their houses!

Truthfully it's something I'm not that bothered about one way or another. That said I don't think it would have any real effect other than to perhaps free up some police/court time for the government and keep those who like a joint happy.

They should just concentrate on class A drugs. 

[Max Power]

John Moores University were commissioned to do a study into the island's drug problem, this is to be presented at Tuesday's Tynwald. 

From the Manx Radio article, I'm unsure what the 49% usage refers to? Are 49% of island residents on Cannabis, Cocaine and ecstacy? Or, is that 49% of drug users use these three drugs, which indicates that 51% use something else, which has to mean that a large proportion of the 51% are on Heroin. I'd find this pretty alarming, and the recreational use of the three drugs headlined pales into insignificance! 

This seems to me to be a bit of a whitewash, hiding the island's Heroin problem for reasons of image, rather than attacking the right side of the problem.

I'm not certain that the island's border controls are lax in any respect, we do not have a customs barrier as we are a part of Great Britain, perhaps our politicos like to see body cavity searches being carried out on every third person entering the island? 

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/drug-policy-needed-on-the-island/

[Cueey Lewis And The News]

46 minutes ago, Max Power said:

John Moores University were commissioned to do a study into the island's drug problem, this is to be presented at Tuesday's Tynwald. 

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/drug-policy-needed-on-the-island/

To summarize the somewhat pointless study. To quote directly from the document it’s clear why nothing will happen.

This means that if the Isle of Man Government does not comply with obligations that have been accepted for the Island under an international treaty it places the UK in breach of those obligations in international law. Such a breach, if not addressed, could be damaging to the Isle of Man’s relationship with the UK.
For this reason, the Island historically ensures close engagement with UK counterparts as part of any change to policy areas where it may be that a change could put the Island into conflict with the UK’s commitments (either where extended to the Island or not) to international treaties. Any changes to the Island’s drugs policy or law would require engagement on this basis.

[Roger Mexico]

48 minutes ago, Max Power said:

From the Manx Radio article, I'm unsure what the 49% usage refers to? Are 49% of island residents on Cannabis, Cocaine and ecstacy? Or, is that 49% of drug users use these three drugs, which indicates that 51% use something else, which has to mean that a large proportion of the 51% are on Heroin. I'd find this pretty alarming, and the recreational use of the three drugs headlined pales into insignificance! 

It confused but it's based on this table from the Report:

The 51% refers the the percentage who have ever used cannabis - 16.5% in the last year, 34.5% less recently.  Manx Radio seems to think that it means that 51% is the percentage that has ever used any illegal drugs, but it might be higher - someone might have tried Ecstasy for example but never smoked cannabis as they're not a smoker.  As you can also see heroin is not a popular drug of choice - less than 2% said they had ever tried it.

[genericUserName]

1 hour ago, Max Power said:

John Moores University were commissioned to do a study into the island's drug problem, this is to be presented at Tuesday's Tynwald. 

If it is anything like the surveys which the students at the local 'university' produce as reasearch material then I would probably be fairly sceptical around the value of its findings. We will all have seen the poorly constructed questionnaires they are encouraged to share on social media as part of their qualifications.

[The Voice of Reason]

On 10/26/2023 at 7:50 PM, Passing Time said:

They should just concentrate on class A drugs. 

It’s a bit hard to concentrate on class A drugs (I imagine)

[TheTeapot]

6 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

It’s a bit hard to concentrate on class A drugs (I imagine)

Amphetamines are class A drugs that can be used to improve concentration

Edit - apologies, no they're not. Class Bs. 

Edited November 19, 2023 by TheTeapot

[The Voice of Reason]

2 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

Amphetamines are class A drugs that can be used to improve concentration

OK. Thanks , my drug knowledge is somewhat limited.

[CrazyDave]

23 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

OK. Thanks , my drug knowledge is somewhat limited.

I would have guessed otherwise TBH 😂

[WTF]

59 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

OK. Thanks , my drug knowledge is somewhat limited.

it affects the memory too.

[Blade Runner]

2 hours ago, TheTeapot said:

Amphetamines are class A drugs that can be used to improve concentration

Edit - apologies, no they're not. Class Bs. 

Best post of the year for the anti drugs lobby..............

[Roger Mexico]

On 11/17/2023 at 8:22 PM, genericUserName said:

If it is anything like the surveys which the students at the local 'university' produce as reasearch material then I would probably be fairly sceptical around the value of its findings. We will all have seen the poorly constructed questionnaires they are encouraged to share on social media as part of their qualifications.

It's nothing like that at at all if you dig around in the details of the methodology as I said at the top of this page.   Of course you'd expect that a survey run by a top University Public Health Department would be rather better than something a GCSE student has put together on their own, that's what learning is all about.  This actually struck me as one of the best Isle of Man surveys I have seen, certainly a lot more than the government minions usually churn out on SurveyMonkey or even the ones that Island Global Research run for them. 

There may be a bit of participation bias - the apathetic are always underrepresented.  But the sampling is better than most opinion polls, the response rate impressive and the questions seem to be fair on the whole.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

I have very little optimism when it comes to governments taking more enlightened approach to dealing with drugs.  They are too many misinformed people and those with their own prejudices to lead to much change.

I remember when Professor Nutt was big in the news and it seemed hard-hitting that the real facts about drugs and harm were being made public.  But it all came to little or nothing. Conservative elements in the UK government didn't want to take the risk of making changes.

And we didn't the Island bring cannabis down from Schedule B to C to only move it back again? Can't remember why.  Is cannabis really that much of a problem to criminalise people in ways that could be harmful to their employment and reputation when alcohol is legal? And we still have estasy as a Class A drug, which isn't justified by anything more than scaremongering. I've heard of people being imprisoned for years for having several tablets, yet someone pissed AND violent can get an equivalent or lesser punishment. And magic mushrooms were made Class A around 2005 or 2006.  Crazy.  I don't think things have shifted enough for society to approach the topic with much sense. 

[The Phantom]

16 hours ago, La_Dolce_Vita said:

And we didn't the Island bring cannabis down from Schedule B to C to only move it back again? Can't remember why.  

Because that's what the UK did.  We can't classify drugs any different to the UK.  That's why we will never change any of our laws relating to this unless the UK does.