April 25, 2012 at 6:58 am
GSquared (4/25/2012)
I love the fact that a discussion about Facebook has morphed into an argument about legalizing heroin. Somehow, it feels completely sequitur.
🙂
April 25, 2012 at 7:24 am
david.wright-948385 (4/25/2012)
You haven't addressed the European drug policy link, which shows increasign use in NL.
Which is odd, because no such increase is seen in the data I've seen. Example:
http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/annual-report/2011
The Netherlands does not appear in the highest cannabis usage lists in this report, Europe as a whole has a *lower* average usage of this drug than the USA, Canada and Australia, and there's a rather interesting chart on page 45 which shows how drug usage changed when legal restrictions on them were either relaxed or made harsher in various European countries...which, oddly enough, shows no correlation between legality and drug use whatsoever. The story is similar for opioids, cocaine, esctasy and amphetamines.
Mind you, we're perhaps being disingenuous saying that drugs are legalised in the Netherlands anyway--they're tolerated for personal use, maybe, but get caught growing cannabis plants in your loft and they'll still throw the book at you!
April 25, 2012 at 7:43 am
paul.knibbs (4/25/2012)
If you mean, my sources, this is a good one:http://www.drugslibrary.stir.ac.uk/documents/heroinpapers.pdf
Your other two points seem to be a matter of opinion, and note I never said that the prescription had *no* effect on the number of addicts, merely that it couldn't be taken in isolation and assumed to be the entire reason for it--especially since the same policy had been in place for 30 years before 1960 without any noticeable increase in addiction levels.
Yeah, I blame those damn hippies and their wild rock and roll music myself 😉
April 25, 2012 at 8:09 am
Freddie-304292 (4/25/2012)Yeah, I blame those damn hippies and their wild rock and roll music myself 😉
🙂
paul.knibbs (4/25/2012)Mind you, we're perhaps being disingenuous saying that drugs are legalised in the Netherlands anyway--they're tolerated for personal use, maybe, but get caught growing cannabis plants in your loft and they'll still throw the book at you!
Yeah, but NL is the nearest to "legal" we have :-/ Does it make it representative enough to use as the basis for a decision?
paul.knibbs (4/25/2012)Example:
The paper says "only 16 countries have provided sufficient data to analyse trends in cannabis use", and NL isn't in the list, so although they go on to say use in NL has reduced, that's not much help 🙁 Other drugs are still illegal in NL, so no help there either.
Perhaps there's an argument that "we're not going to find out until we try", but I'd be a NIMBY on that one.
April 25, 2012 at 8:27 am
david.wright-948385 (4/25/2012)and NL isn't in the list, so although they go on to say use in NL has reduced, that's not much help 🙁 Other drugs are still illegal in NL, so no help there either.
I think they have data from previous years...it was just 2009 (the last year they had data for this report) where the Netherlands didn't supply anything. The Netherlands definitely appears in some of the charts, although usually with slightly older data.
It's probably a moot point, though. When cannabis was reclassified as a class B drug in the UK, it was actually a popular move with the public, but once Tony Blair went and Gordon Brown came in, it got classified back to class C over the protests of the government's scientific advisors (one of whom was sacked and another five resigned in sympathy). The suspicion is that the reclassification was primarily due to Brown's personal views rather than any sort of thought-through response!
April 25, 2012 at 8:35 am
paul.knibbs (4/25/2012)The suspicion is that the reclassification was primarily due to Brown's personal views rather than any sort of thought-through response!
Yeah, it's a bit disturbing that such fundamental issues can be decided in that way, but that would take this thread even further from Facebook issues 🙂
April 25, 2012 at 8:38 am
Perhaps there's an argument that "we're not going to find out until we try", but I'd be a NIMBY on that one.
But until we try, people are going to prison, or at least getting criminal records which affect their job prospects, for nothing more then having a spliff, which many believe to be less dangerous then alcohol. There are many people with criminal records for drugs who wouldn't dream of breaking any other law.
April 25, 2012 at 8:45 am
paul.knibbs (4/25/2012)
... When cannabis was reclassified as a class B drug in the UK, it was actually a popular move with the public, but once Tony Blair went and Gordon Brown came in, it got classified back to class C ....
Can't believe I'm still reading this... but since I am:
Which contains the stiffer legal penalty - a class B or C drug substance?
I assume B (like here in the US)
Reading this is like a looking at traffic accident, why (180 posts in) do I do it?
😉
April 25, 2012 at 8:49 am
Oops, I've got my Bs and Cs mixed up--class B is the worse one. Cannabis was classified to class C in 2004, then back to B in 2008.
April 25, 2012 at 10:32 am
GSquared (4/25/2012)
I love the fact that a discussion about Facebook has morphed into an argument about legalizing heroin. Somehow, it feels completely sequitur.
ROFL
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April 25, 2012 at 1:25 pm
If I could get the thread back on topic for a minute: I think requiring access to your credit report is just as bad as requesting social media passwords.
I don't buy the line, "If you're in debt, we think you may be more likely to steal from us." Did it occur to them that I'm in debt because I don't steal from the company? Or maybe I'm not in debt because I do steal from the company?
And no, this hasn't happened to me.
April 25, 2012 at 1:37 pm
I agree.
Cheers
April 25, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Peter Maloof (4/25/2012)
If I could get the thread back on topic for a minute: I think requiring access to your credit report is just as bad as requesting social media passwords.I don't buy the line, "If you're in debt, we think you may be more likely to steal from us." Did it occur to them that I'm in debt because I don't steal from the company? Or maybe I'm not in debt because I do steal from the company?
And no, this hasn't happened to me.
Heavy debt can make a person more prone towards accepting bribe attempts, or towards desperate actions of a similar nature. Temptation, in the form of "You will be evicted unless" type notices, can drive previously honest people to desperate acts they wouldn't otherwise consider. That's one factor in it.
In high-security jobs, they want to access credit data because if, shortly after you get a job with access to confidential information, you suddenly pay off your 30-year, $500,000 mortgage 28 years early, it's a little suspicious. Doesn't prove anything, but it's a definite red flag.
It's like the use of credit scores to modify insurance rates. Doesn't seem fair, but it's a measurable fact that lower credit scores are statistically higher risks. It's been hypothesized that people with less risk-aversion will both end up in more accidents, more risky health habits, and using more of their available credit, as a correlation. Whatever the actual cause, there is a definite statistic correlation between higher insurance risks and lower credit scores.
The only reason I know all of this is that I ended up with a very low credit score after the company my wife and I both worked for went out of business and suddenly neither of us had any income, shortly after we had used most of our reserves to buy a new house. No income (for a short while), our final paychecks being pulled back out of our checking accounts (after direct deposit), and very little available reserves, and we ended up with maxed out credit cards, late payments on a few bills, and that kind of thing. While my score was abysmally low from that, I got very, very familiar with all the consequences of it. Being the curious, research-driven person that I am, I dug in and found out why those consequences existed.
So it does make some sense to check credit before closing an offer on a job. Yes, there are people who are trustworthy and ethical who have low credit scores for reasons beyond their own control (like I was). But that's the exception, not the rule, and companies often have to work on what's statistically likely, since they don't yet know you well enough to tell if it's an anomally or not.
But that's different from asking for a Facebook password. There's no evidence at all that personal data on Facebook, especially what's hidden behind the privacy wall, has any correlation at all to trustworthiness. And there is definite evidence that it allows for violation of equal opportunity laws.
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April 25, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Heavy debt can make a person more prone towards accepting bribe attempts, or towards desperate actions of a similar nature.
I worked for the Seminole Tribe for a number of years in their casino operations and if you could not pass a credit report with a certain score you did not get the job, period. They cited the same reasons 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
April 25, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Never been to the Tampa casino though it is just across the bridge. I'm not much of a gambler.
Cheers
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