5 ms·

There was a RAND study many years ago which showed that, from a pure cost benefit point of view, the best way to deal with drugs is through education and treatm

There was a RAND study many years ago which showed that, from a pure cost benefit point of view, the best way to deal with drugs is through education and treatment, not policing and punishment. Eg Americans today smoke a lot less tobacco and drink less coffee too. Education works!

m463 6y ago
(it has all switched to sugar/processed carbs!)
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
By contrast some European countries, like Austria, drink a lot of coffee and smoke a lot of tobacco(they just banned indoor smoking last year). National culture plays a huge role in what vices people take on.
- unwind 6y ago
  According to [1], Europe is the world's largest coffee market, at 33% of production. North America consumes 19%. Consumption per capita up here in the wonderful Nordics is quite high, with Finland typically leading at 12 kg/person. The corresponding number for the US is around 4.2 kg (9.3 lbs). The Telegraph has a fun list [2] showing the top 20 consumers. [1] https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/coffee/trade-statistics https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/coffee/trade-statistic... [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/countries-that-drink-the-most-coffee/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/countri...
  - ciceryadam 6y ago
    wow, 1 kg per month means 133 shots of espresso a month - roughly 4.5 espresso shots every day, including weekends.
    - gspr 6y ago
      Sounds about right for me here in Norway. I really need to cut back.
- pritovido 6y ago
  I went to Viena three years ago. It shocked me how much they smoke everywhere and also how much sugar addicted they were. The food is soooo sweet, sugar, sugar and sugar everywhere. Other places like Salzburg are different in so many ways. Viena has always been a political, bureaucracy center. Cafeterias in Viena are political institutions, you can imagine Freud or Lenin or Stalin, Stefan Sweig, Carl Jung, Hitler, Marx, Goethe, just there, because they went there.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    > I went to Viena three years ago. It shocked me how much they smoke everywhere This is history now. But I agree that it was very bad, it was part of Austria's "coffee house culture" to have the stale smoke odour everywhere (furniture, curtains etc.). It was much worse in the 80's and earlier though. The sugar addiction is mainly due to the influence of bohemian cuisine and popular sweet snacks like "Manner Schnitten".
  - ginko 6y ago
    How is the food particularly sweet? The only sweet stuff I can think of are cakes and desserts and those are supposed to be sweet.
codemac 6y ago
> drink less coffee Really? Curious about this, because everyone around me (including me) drinks a metric crap ton of caffeine, either in tea, coffee, or energy drinks.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I've actually switched off caffeine in a big way since the pandemic started - I have a chance to sleep in later in the morning and get some activity before needing to get straight into work - additionally I can take a break mid-day to walk and clear my head or even shift some hours around and take a quick nap if I need it. A nice upside to remoting.
  - eecc 6y ago
    Yup, I’m in the same boat. I must have reduced my coffee intake from several bad cups from an automatic vending machine to only 1.5 moka (6 cups each) per day. Still quite a lot of coffee, but it tastes much better.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Whaa?? Coffee consumption has dropped more than 50 percent in 70 years https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/u-s-coffee-consumption-had-dropped-more-than-50-in-70-years/ https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/u-s-coffee-consumption-had... Why??
  - Xylakant 6y ago
    keep in mind that this is in gallons per capita, not in grams coffee beans or in a caffeine equivalent. So the stats may be misleading: People in 1960 would drink filter coffee. Today, they may take an espresso. Roughly same amount of ground coffee per cup, but less liquid. Then again, the stats for coffee beans per capita may trend in the same direction. We have other sources of caffeine today: You may drink a coke instead of a coffee when you're feeling sleepy.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
Unfortunately, I think for many in America, the conversation need not even advance to discussing efficiency, effectiveness or value. Government propaganda, a good deal of it channelled through TV and Hollywood have so thuroughly established unrepentant drug users as villians that many people want it prosecuted on its face for its immorality. Lawmakers find it difficult to let up on drug crimes because they are quickly painted as weak and enablers of other crimes. It's the same tirh the death penalty. The problems with it are plain for all to see. But lawmakers feel the need to signal the virtue of "justice" or "strength" and enough voters still respond to that signal. Even in the supposedly lefty stare of Washington where I reside, progress on criminal justice issues has been glacially slow.
- dstick 6y ago
  Agreed. Which in my view stems from the perverse need to simplify everything. Some things just aren’t simple. The “solution” of locking someone up and then walking away is easier than it is to help someone, work through relapses and end up with a healthy individual after X years. The latter is obviously better, and cheaper, but it costs patience and empathy. Things that are in short supply these days.
- bismuthsalt 6y ago
  The conversation in America, on any topic, is between two extreme sides which get further apart and further unreasonable as time passes. Fast forwarding circa 2021, one side wants to throw anyone with 1g of marijuana in a 30ft radius from their car into jail for 10 years, the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. More seriously, the big distinction is between drug users and drug dealers. The former are usually victims and deserve our collective help, the latter are usually predators and deserve to rot in jail. I haven't followed Hollywood in the past decade, but in my recollection Hollywood used to correctly vilify drug dealers.
  - severine 6y ago
    > the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. Even followed with a "more seriosly", that's an unfair and misleading representation.
civilian 6y ago
> drink less coffee Is this a good thing?
Krasnol 6y ago
> Eg Americans today smoke a lot less tobacco and drink less coffee too. Education works! Are there any scientific facts which would back this? To me it feels like there have been several other causes to that which were much more relevant. Not allowing people to smoke inside, vaping and smoking getting "out of fashion" were much more successful. It's just not cool anymore and those who still want to smoke are being confined to disgusting places to do it. Soo...it kinda works against your argument because it was a bad example. The only thing we may take away from it would be that if we'd have made smoking tobacco illegal everywhere, it would have remained cool to do so secretly...maybe.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  It's not cool to smoke anymore because of all the aducation and PR campaigns. The decline started decades before vaping and bans on smoking inside. It started when the message changed. In the US "peak smoking" occurred in the 1960s and consumptions has been decreasing ever since [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Smoking was already generally in decline in most countries, including the US, who introduced public bans. It was a big part of what made the bans politically feasible in the first place.
- DanBC 6y ago
  The biggest driver of behaviour change is increasing the price. Cigarettes are considerably more expensive (even when adjusting for inflation) than they used to be. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-pack-of-cigarettes-through-the-decades/2/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-p... Other things (bans on ads, bans on smoking in venues, health information) do help, but they're a smaller part of the picture.
  - Krasnol 6y ago
    True. I did forget this up there.
nikitaga 6y ago
It doesn't seem that reduction in coffee consumption had anything to do with education, but with increased availability and marketing of carbonated sugared drinks. Also, in recent years total coffee consumption started to increase again, driven by hip coffee shops. It's hard to win against billions in marketing. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/coffee-consumption-over-the-last-century/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/coffee-consum... https://qz.com/quartzy/1287862/american-coffee-consumption-is-on-the-rise-and-disposable-cups-and-straws-with-it/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1287862/american-coffee-consumption-i...
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
There's an anti-caffeine 'education' programme in the states? For real?
- wccrawford 6y ago
  If there is, it's subtle. I've heard about studies that talk about the negatives of caffeine, as well as some that talk about the benefits. But none of that seemed to be pushing an agenda. Practically everyone around me thinks they need caffeine to get through the day. I'm one of the only people I know who are caffeine-free. Long ago, I thought caffeine gave me headaches, and I refused to drink it. Then I started having trouble staying away during the day and nothing the doctors did mattered. So I turned to caffeine reluctantly, and it helped for a while. Eventually I was drinking so much caffeine each day that I was getting sick from it. So I cut back, and then I was falling asleep during the day again. (Or at least feeling exhausted and that I needed to sleep and kind of took a waking nap.) So I cut off the caffeine again and, no big surprise, it's the same as when I was drinking caffeine. Except that I don't get any caffeine-withdrawal headaches when I can't get enough or forget to drink enough. I know from the past that telling people they don't need caffeine doesn't work, though. They just won't listen. They have to figure it out themselves. So yeah... If there's an anti-caffeine education here, it's very subtle.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  When the physician diagnoses you with caffeine abuse when you drink 1.5 liters of coffee over the day, yes.

m463 6y ago

(it has all switched to sugar/processed carbs!)

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

By contrast some European countries, like Austria, drink a lot of coffee and smoke a lot of tobacco(they just banned indoor smoking last year). National culture plays a huge role in what vices people take on.

unwind 6y ago
According to [1], Europe is the world's largest coffee market, at 33% of production. North America consumes 19%. Consumption per capita up here in the wonderful Nordics is quite high, with Finland typically leading at 12 kg/person. The corresponding number for the US is around 4.2 kg (9.3 lbs). The Telegraph has a fun list [2] showing the top 20 consumers. [1] https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/coffee/trade-statistics https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/coffee/trade-statistic... [2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/countries-that-drink-the-most-coffee/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-and-graphics/countri...
- ciceryadam 6y ago
  wow, 1 kg per month means 133 shots of espresso a month - roughly 4.5 espresso shots every day, including weekends.
  - gspr 6y ago
    Sounds about right for me here in Norway. I really need to cut back.
pritovido 6y ago
I went to Viena three years ago. It shocked me how much they smoke everywhere and also how much sugar addicted they were. The food is soooo sweet, sugar, sugar and sugar everywhere. Other places like Salzburg are different in so many ways. Viena has always been a political, bureaucracy center. Cafeterias in Viena are political institutions, you can imagine Freud or Lenin or Stalin, Stefan Sweig, Carl Jung, Hitler, Marx, Goethe, just there, because they went there.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  > I went to Viena three years ago. It shocked me how much they smoke everywhere This is history now. But I agree that it was very bad, it was part of Austria's "coffee house culture" to have the stale smoke odour everywhere (furniture, curtains etc.). It was much worse in the 80's and earlier though. The sugar addiction is mainly due to the influence of bohemian cuisine and popular sweet snacks like "Manner Schnitten".
- ginko 6y ago
  How is the food particularly sweet? The only sweet stuff I can think of are cakes and desserts and those are supposed to be sweet.

codemac 6y ago

> drink less coffee Really? Curious about this, because everyone around me (including me) drinks a metric crap ton of caffeine, either in tea, coffee, or energy drinks.

munk-a 6y ago
I've actually switched off caffeine in a big way since the pandemic started - I have a chance to sleep in later in the morning and get some activity before needing to get straight into work - additionally I can take a break mid-day to walk and clear my head or even shift some hours around and take a quick nap if I need it. A nice upside to remoting.
- eecc 6y ago
  Yup, I’m in the same boat. I must have reduced my coffee intake from several bad cups from an automatic vending machine to only 1.5 moka (6 cups each) per day. Still quite a lot of coffee, but it tastes much better.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
Whaa?? Coffee consumption has dropped more than 50 percent in 70 years https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/u-s-coffee-consumption-had-dropped-more-than-50-in-70-years/ https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/u-s-coffee-consumption-had... Why??
- Xylakant 6y ago
  keep in mind that this is in gallons per capita, not in grams coffee beans or in a caffeine equivalent. So the stats may be misleading: People in 1960 would drink filter coffee. Today, they may take an espresso. Roughly same amount of ground coffee per cup, but less liquid. Then again, the stats for coffee beans per capita may trend in the same direction. We have other sources of caffeine today: You may drink a coke instead of a coffee when you're feeling sleepy.

DubiousPusher 6y ago

Unfortunately, I think for many in America, the conversation need not even advance to discussing efficiency, effectiveness or value. Government propaganda, a good deal of it channelled through TV and Hollywood have so thuroughly established unrepentant drug users as villians that many people want it prosecuted on its face for its immorality. Lawmakers find it difficult to let up on drug crimes because they are quickly painted as weak and enablers of other crimes. It's the same tirh the death penalty. The problems with it are plain for all to see. But lawmakers feel the need to signal the virtue of "justice" or "strength" and enough voters still respond to that signal. Even in the supposedly lefty stare of Washington where I reside, progress on criminal justice issues has been glacially slow.

dstick 6y ago
Agreed. Which in my view stems from the perverse need to simplify everything. Some things just aren’t simple. The “solution” of locking someone up and then walking away is easier than it is to help someone, work through relapses and end up with a healthy individual after X years. The latter is obviously better, and cheaper, but it costs patience and empathy. Things that are in short supply these days.
bismuthsalt 6y ago
The conversation in America, on any topic, is between two extreme sides which get further apart and further unreasonable as time passes. Fast forwarding circa 2021, one side wants to throw anyone with 1g of marijuana in a 30ft radius from their car into jail for 10 years, the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. More seriously, the big distinction is between drug users and drug dealers. The former are usually victims and deserve our collective help, the latter are usually predators and deserve to rot in jail. I haven't followed Hollywood in the past decade, but in my recollection Hollywood used to correctly vilify drug dealers.
- severine 6y ago
  > the other wants free heroin dispensing machines in schools. Even followed with a "more seriosly", that's an unfair and misleading representation.

civilian 6y ago

> drink less coffee Is this a good thing?

Krasnol 6y ago

> Eg Americans today smoke a lot less tobacco and drink less coffee too. Education works! Are there any scientific facts which would back this? To me it feels like there have been several other causes to that which were much more relevant. Not allowing people to smoke inside, vaping and smoking getting "out of fashion" were much more successful. It's just not cool anymore and those who still want to smoke are being confined to disgusting places to do it. Soo...it kinda works against your argument because it was a bad example. The only thing we may take away from it would be that if we'd have made smoking tobacco illegal everywhere, it would have remained cool to do so secretly...maybe.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
It's not cool to smoke anymore because of all the aducation and PR campaigns. The decline started decades before vaping and bans on smoking inside. It started when the message changed. In the US "peak smoking" occurred in the 1960s and consumptions has been decreasing ever since [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK294310/figure/ch2.f1/
rsynnott 6y ago
Smoking was already generally in decline in most countries, including the US, who introduced public bans. It was a big part of what made the bans politically feasible in the first place.
DanBC 6y ago
The biggest driver of behaviour change is increasing the price. Cigarettes are considerably more expensive (even when adjusting for inflation) than they used to be. https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-pack-of-cigarettes-through-the-decades/2/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/06/19/price-of-a-p... Other things (bans on ads, bans on smoking in venues, health information) do help, but they're a smaller part of the picture.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  True. I did forget this up there.

nikitaga 6y ago

It doesn't seem that reduction in coffee consumption had anything to do with education, but with increased availability and marketing of carbonated sugared drinks. Also, in recent years total coffee consumption started to increase again, driven by hip coffee shops. It's hard to win against billions in marketing. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/coffee-consumption-over-the-last-century/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/coffee-consum... https://qz.com/quartzy/1287862/american-coffee-consumption-is-on-the-rise-and-disposable-cups-and-straws-with-it/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1287862/american-coffee-consumption-i...

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

There's an anti-caffeine 'education' programme in the states? For real?

wccrawford 6y ago
If there is, it's subtle. I've heard about studies that talk about the negatives of caffeine, as well as some that talk about the benefits. But none of that seemed to be pushing an agenda. Practically everyone around me thinks they need caffeine to get through the day. I'm one of the only people I know who are caffeine-free. Long ago, I thought caffeine gave me headaches, and I refused to drink it. Then I started having trouble staying away during the day and nothing the doctors did mattered. So I turned to caffeine reluctantly, and it helped for a while. Eventually I was drinking so much caffeine each day that I was getting sick from it. So I cut back, and then I was falling asleep during the day again. (Or at least feeling exhausted and that I needed to sleep and kind of took a waking nap.) So I cut off the caffeine again and, no big surprise, it's the same as when I was drinking caffeine. Except that I don't get any caffeine-withdrawal headaches when I can't get enough or forget to drink enough. I know from the past that telling people they don't need caffeine doesn't work, though. They just won't listen. They have to figure it out themselves. So yeah... If there's an anti-caffeine education here, it's very subtle.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
When the physician diagnoses you with caffeine abuse when you drink 1.5 liters of coffee over the day, yes.