Why is the youth vote so hard to crack?

The Dominion Post asked in an oped…

“About 95,000 Kiwis aged 18-24 are still not enrolled to vote. Why don’t young people vote and why don’t they care?” – KERRY WILLIAMSON – The Dominion Post Saturday, 04 October 2008

With young folk polling around 80% in the consumption of cannabis stakes – no wonder they are disillusioned with politics today. Not for the reason that the ageist prejudiced might first think either… for *every one of ‘that demographic’ who are under duress of criminal sanction even if arbitrary, a law that parliament has twice ‘set aside resolving in coalition agreements with parties that between them are polling less than half a percent between them.’ – And we ask why are young alienated… fur’chris’ake?

(*including those who don’t smoke pot, after all, it is politicians who would declare that it is the ‘law’ that prevents them from so doing, otherwise cannabis would be tantamount to compulsory. Yet the herb couldn’t be more popular if it were made so, or more culturally imbued in art, music, theatre, television and movies… )

What is needed to capture youth votes is a real NZ Green Billboard promoting homegrown solutions. (and a media that would tell the truth, when have you seen journalists ask our wannabe leadership tackle this one)

– don’t laugh, 1999 saw Jenny Shipley die in the polls after failing to tell the truth when questioned alongside Jeanette Fitzsimmons by Paul Holmes – Check the Waikato University analysis. Nationals wheels fell off – Nov 16, ‘not over my dead body’ Shipley denied due process and the recommendations of the National lead “Brian Nesson” Health Select Committee – ‘to review the law’ – for political expediency. She could have Jenny and Bill,
and the drugs we drink!looked to her own kids for some advice… they had more experience ‘in this matter’ than she may have cared to acknowledge parentally or politically.

Youth have had ten more years of double standards (and repeated coalition agreements) to be aggrieved but not one politician has been asking why…… tens of thousands of arrests every year… unpublished ‘tough on non-crime hypocrisy!’

How come its not OK to ‘correct your own kids’ but the state can abuse them arbitrarily with incarceration and cuff-links for a non-crime?

This is one law that is racist, ageist and sexist in its application… and young people are rightly ‘turned off’ by this white privilege shite.

It is time for some social ecology driven ‘protect our youth’ drug law reform, it is the stuff of social capital.

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com/

• Modern Day Slavery: Racism in the Drug War
• This is Your Nation on White Privilege

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Causation, Correlation, Nicotine, Alcohol & Pot.

Teenagers who smoke are five times more likely to drink and 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who are not smokers, says a US report issued today.

The report by Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse presented further evidence linking youth smoking to other substance abuse and spotlighted research on how nicotine affects the adolescent brain.

“Teenage smoking can signal the fire of alcohol and drug abuse or mental illness like depression and anxiety,” Joseph Califano, who heads the centre and is a former US health secretary, said in a telephone interview.

The report analysed surveys conducted by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other data on youth smokers. Most smokers begin smoking before age 18.

Smokers aged 12 to 17 were more likely drink alcohol than nonsmokers – 59 per cent compared to 11 per cent, the report found. Those who become regular smokers by age 12 are more than three times more likely to report binge drinking than those who never smoked – 31 per cent compared to nine per cent.

Binge drinking was defined as having five drinks or more in a row.

Asked whether smoking is causing these other behaviours or is just another risky behaviour occurring alongside the others, Califano said, “There’s no question that early teenage smoking is linked to these other things. Now whether it’s causing it or not, I think the jury is probably still out on that.”

Smokers ages 12 to 17 are more apt to meet the diagnostic definition for drug abuse or dependence in the previous year – 26 per cent compared to two per cent, the researchers said.

The report noted that marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among teenagers, with government data from 2005 showing seven per cent of those aged 12 to 17 used marijuana.

Of these, current cigarette smokers are 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who do not smoke.

The younger a child starts smoking, the greater the risk, the Columbia team said.

Children who start smoking by age 12 are more than three times more likely to binge on alcohol, nearly 15 times more likely to smoke marijuana and almost seven times more likely to use other drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Teenagers who smoke also have a higher risk of depression and anxiety disorders, the study found.

The report cited scientific studies showing the nicotine in tobacco products can produce structural and chemical changes in the developing brain that make young people vulnerable to alcohol and other drug addiction and mental illness.

This includes effects on the brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin and changes to brain receptors associated with an increased desire for other addictive drugs.

Reuters

A poverty of reason.

Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse have identified that naughty kids do naughty things…. (see MRC: Medical Rearch Council – News Antisocial behaviour in kids key to alcohol trouble in teens )

Like protecting the ‘vulnerable’ is the American way! Balderdash.
When we [NZ included] arrest someone for pot, we turn an otherwise normal person into a ‘victim’ purportedly to save them from themselves.

This study is evidence ‘pot laws’ protect and arguably, promote early entry into the ‘harmful’, albeit legal drug markets.

Worse, it avoids discussing the social ecology, the set and setting of poverty along with the toxic laws that create both the opportunity/incentive for early entry and rejection of social values/alienation and any subsequent ‘deviancy amplification’.

If pot wasn’t illegal, rather controlled by legal regulation, these kids would in all likelihood come to little or no harm. Isn’t that the desired ‘harm minimising’ outcome here?.

Consider; If ALL youth smoked pot and didn’t binge drink or inhale nicotine, the ‘life time’ prognosis would be entirely different.

As I have said on many occasions, prohibition couldn’t promote pot use to kids more efficiently than if pot was made compulsory.

The best advertising to prevent youth uptake would be to say cannabis is really good for rheumatism and other (over 50) age related stuff. It would turn them right off!

A bit of intellectual honesty is the ‘cure’. /Blair

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Russell Brown sells ‘Anti Violence’ campaign?

From: Kevin O’Connell

I am not sure that Russell Brown has done much for his credibility by being the first guy lining up earnestly on the family commission’s new tv commercials preaching (along with people like radio personality Phil Gifford and half a dozen other ordinary Kiwis) that ‘family violence is not ok’

…the target audience is alienated by government and its do-gooder sycophants and agencies. Russell, how much did they pay you and do you really believe the campaign (telling people to tell on their neighbours) is going to work? ( narc’ing up / blair)

Also you are lining up with government’s feeble and scientifically invalid ‘separate issue’ mentality where NZ social problems are all separate and can be alleviated by funding the various community programmes and government agencies and early intervention initiatives. (which co-incidently is good for the economy, but i digress…)

Labour seem to genuinely believe or are at least implying that family violence

• has nothing to do with ‘youth crime’
• has nothing to do with ‘binge drinking culture’
• has nothing to do with ‘criminality in general’
• has nothing to do with ‘drunk driving’
• has nothing to do with ‘gambling addiction’
• has nothing to do with ‘police corruption’
• has nothing to do with ‘kiwi underclass’
• has nothing to do with ‘drug harm prevention’,
• has nothing to do with ‘matrix of dysfunction’
• has nothing to do with ‘closing the gaps’…

If you get my drift: the problems in NZ are intrinsic and the family commission is looking at things ‘peicemeal’ IE THEY’VE GOT IT WRONG, and the adds cost heaps but aint worth shit.

I guess Russel’s ‘getting older’ and becoming more and more a ‘safe pair of hands’ for authorised media (eg Radio NZ) to get opinions from. How about focusing on the inequity and alienating factor of NZ’s drug laws Russell – you know there’s a lot of bullshit and injustice and hypocrisy goin on in this particular area of the kiwi experience. (i know because i’ve posted your insights to this forum (cclr-public), many a time)

(i do not have Russel’s email so if someone can foward this to him…)

Regards
Kevin O’Connell

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NZHerald: What can be done about school violence?

Deviancy amplifying behavior; youth alienation from societal norms and disrespect for rule of law has been dealt with from a policy analytic ‘social ecology’ perspective. The findings show that gravely flawed drug policy is the culprit. Ipso facto the solution, necessary drug law reform has been espoused many times to select committee’s, ministers, ministries and law makers.

In jurisdictions where this debate has been held teen misbehaviors have been substantially mediated. The Netherlands is one such example. Teen Pregnancy, STDs, Bullying, Tagging, and a raft of other biopsychosocial indicators (not the least drug use) are not just a fraction of ours, they are orders of magnitude less than ours. Dutch Parents are empowered. Dutch schools are, well, just schools.

The drug war [is] against local control and parental responsibility “There may soon come a time when conservatives ask how national drug policy became a proxy war on parental rights” Doing it for The Children:Independence Institute, http://www.i2i.org/

Prohibition: a cure worse than the disease.

It is time that an unfettered debate surrounding this vexing issue be held and the underlying tensions resolved.

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