I think it's rather peculiar to come to the conclusion that there is little information for other countries.

1. Using various policies, Iceland has been able to strongly reduce the amount of substance abuse in their country.

2. Other countries suffer from substance abuse as well

3. The article notes that the method is mostly data driven. This implies similar methods should apply to different countries.

How do you come to the conclusion that the information presented in the article is not applicable to other countries? Why would a racial dissimilar, larger and heterogeneous population not benefit from a data-driven approach to limit substance abuse?

I'd go the opposite way: because the populations are larger, noise has less influence on the data-driven approach and tests can be accelerated.

With a population as small as iceland's there is no such thing as anonymity. Maybe these policies would work in a small town without much population turnover? Cultural context of cultural policies is actually really important. What works in Japan might not work in Springfield. Data driven is very good though, the temptation to reclassify failure as success on such problems is extremely high, unfortunately - and I am absolutely not being critical of those who are genuinely making the attempt to improve socail conditions - it's a human failing we all have. The road to hell is paved in good intentions etc. etc.

If you're trying to argue that Iceland's population is therefore just not culturally predisposed to juvenile delinquency, underage drinking, smoking, or drug abuse, you must have missed the part where Iceland started out with high measured levels of those things, then staged interventions, and wound up with low levels of those things.

This sounds like the old, worn-out argument that "we're too big and diverse to have nice things like the Nordics".

With that can't do attitude of course things will never get fixed in the US.

This argument is more palatable than the truth it masks, which is that we are unwilling to spend money and time making nice things like the Nordics do, and many wealthy people like it that way because it keeps their taxes low.

I invite all of you that hold this position to travel across the country and do in-depth qualities one studies with interviews, surveys, actual population observations and see if these very simplistic ideas still hold true. How's that for data?

I never mentioned "can't do". We cant do it the Nordic way.

End the drug war is a simple solution to all of America's drug problems. American politicians and prison-industrial-complex likes drug addicts. That is why USA has a drug problem.

> Smoking is going out of fashion pretty fast in USA too.

Source?

Yes, Smoking traditional tobacco is going out of fashion pretty much around the world. It's been replaced by the increasing popular E-Cigarrettes / "Vaping", which is also Tobacco and poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco.

Especially very prevalent among-st Teenagers and young people. Heavily marketed by Big Tobacco as "Safe".

Sources:

1) CDC: Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students — United States, 2011–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6514a1.htm?s_cid=mm...

1) England: Smoking rate continues to decrease while vaping gains in popularity http://www.vapingpost.com/2016/09/22/england-smoking-rate-co...

2) The good news is that cigarettes are out these days. The bad news is that tobacco is still in. http://www.teenvogue.com/story/vaping-tobacco-popularity

>E-Cigarrettes / "Vaping", which is also Tobacco and poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco.

This is wrong, and absolutely harmful information to spread. Cigarette smoking causes cancer through burning tobacco plant matter, a process that releases a variety of toxic chemicals. Vaporization of e-liquid does not burn tobacco plant matter, and thus doesn't have the same issues.

E-liquid is basically nicotine, glycerol and/or proplyene glycol solute, and flavoring. Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk. The solute is much the same stuff as in asthma inhalers. There isn't really good research for the flavoring, but it's generally ingredients that are recognized as safe to put in food.

Overall, vaping is likely at least an order of magnitude safer than smoking. Probably two. That's not anywhere near "the same health risks as traditional tobacco." I'm personally more worried about spending lots of time near busy roads. If a policy causes X more people to vape per person that no longer smokes, X would have to be at least 100 for me to think it's a net negative.

  Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk

There is evidence that Nicotine replacement products do increase the risk of cancer. Every source I've read says that the risk is less than smoking cigarettes, but vaping (for example) is still an increased risk over not using nicotine at all.

Current NHS advice puts vaping at 95% less risk than smoking, which is to say an increased risk (5% of the smoking risk), compared to not vaping.

- https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes

- http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/24/can-nicot...

- http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/04April/Pages/NicotineGumCancer....

- http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/prevention-and-...

Yeah, the research on nicotine replacement products isn't very mature. The links you gave are interesting, but more along the lines of "nicotine can do the same sort of things to mouth cells that happens when you have mouth cancer", not "we took a look at X number of people and looked at mouth cancer incident rates".

The NHS advice is interesting, thanks for contributing it. It's a good sign that I'm on the right track - I put it at "one to two orders of magnitude", or to use the same units, 1% to 10% of the cancer risk of cigarettes. The NHS is likely biased towards saying things cause cancer (because incentives - nobody causes a ruckus if something they thought causes cancer is safe, but everyone gets way riled up if something the NHS thinks is safe causes cancer). So my updated belief is now that vaping causes less than 1% of the cancer that smoking does, per user.

It's probably worth avoiding e-juice with diacetyl, though.

> Nicotine replacement products aren't associated with cancer risk

This is what's really wrong, and absolutely harmful information to spread.

Your source for all these claims you are making about Vaping being "Safe"?

Stealing a source from elsewhere in the thread:

The NHS estimates that vaping is no more than 5% of the danger of smoking.

(https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree/help-and-advice/e-cigarettes)

Heavy smoking is roughly the equivalent of losing somewhere between one and three healthy years of life.

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361023/)

Combine the two estimates at their most conservative, add a tad of fudge factor, and heavy vaping use will at worst cost you two months of healthy living. People regularly make worse tradeoffs than this - obesity, amount and recklessness of driving, playing professional American Football, and many others are likely worse.

Whether or not that counts as "safe" is up to you and your risk tolerance, of course. As a non-smoker, that's safe enough for me to try vaping to see if nicotine a stimulant worth using.

> poses the same health risks as traditional tobacco

I'm sorry, what? It may pose health risks, but I have not seen anything remotely resembling evidence it poses the same health risks as smoking or chewing.

Vaping is safer: https://wallethub.com/blog/is-vaping-bad-for-you/23907/

Conflating tobacco with nicotine is also a bad move.

wallethub.com link? Really? Ever heard of Astroturfing?

The Big Tobacco and Vaping Lobbyists have tons of "blog posts" and "research" news that "debunk" all the bad things about Vaping and Smoking.

Required Viewing: Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

I'm familiar with the idea of astroturfing. I majored in biochemistry. And while I haven't read the research, it seems fairly straight-forward.

Nicotine and some flavors are dissolved into food-safe glycerin. Then that mixture is raised to a temperature where it becomes a gas, but not a temperature high enough for it to burn. Then it is inhaled.

If you compare that to smoking--- a cigarette actually _burns_, and during that oxidation process it'll make thousands upon thousands of variants of chemicals. And because they've been oxidized, they're more reactive.

I'm not saying vaping is safe. But I'm saying that it's obvious that it's safer than cigarettes.

You should also check out this. I am open to the idea that vaping might be _as bad_ as cigarettes, but currently the evidence shows that they're way better, and can be a good tool for quitting. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-around-95-le...

> I'm not saying vaping is safe. But I'm saying that it's obvious that it's safer than cigarettes.

Agreed. Saying something is 'safer' than something else, doesn't make the original thing 'Safe'. Vaping causes Cancer, so does Tobacco smoking. All of you are saying "Vaping is Safer because it isn't AS BAD AS smoking Tobacco". Agreed. But another way of saying is "We think Vaping is Safer because it causes Cancer in 20 years, whereas Tobacco smoking is will cause Cancer in 10 years"

That's fair.

Does vaping cause cancer in 20 years?? Or are you just postulating an example?

You sound like the US government, somehow redefining the word tabacco to include things which have nothing to do with tabacco.

burning leaves doesn't produce same amount of harmful stuff as vaping (which still isn't healthy, but com on, lets use some common sense here)

"mostly homogeneous racially similar people"

Arf. Arf.

I appreciate your joke but I don't think the HN populace gets the full context because there are a couple of steps that need to happen to connect the parent quote and your punchline.

Just spell it out.

  D-O-G W-H-I-S-T-L-E

I've been seeing you around HN a lot recently and I've gotta say with your -5 points and all you are winning my heart

Ha! I just noticed this. My comments don't karma whore, and I'm not interested in appeasing the whims of the mods.

It doesn't do the community much good to pull punches, if that means putting a diplomatic muzzle on valid points and opinions that contrast with a preferred norm.

It is appalling that calling out an obvious dog-whistle phrase is either not understood or unwelcome here. This is what leads to "race realism" becoming an acceptable topic in some circles.

What's misunderstood is your concept of the HN downvote.

It is neither rational, nor fair, nor explained. It materializes from thin air, lands on anyone that awakens a even but pang of discomfort in another user, and smears all words irrevocably, and dispassionately.

You might catch a downvote for being vague. You might catch a downvote for mispelling. You might catch a downvote for trying to be funny, and succeeding, but because you've offended the faceless humorless. Even an obsequeous comment will be downvoted for spinelessness.

Few honest comments actually work on HN. Almost all HN comments need to be slippery, many require a fecetious concilliatory bent.

You really can't win when commenting. Not anywhere. Someone out there will find a reason to slam you.

I am fascinated that you decided to make a new HN alias in order to articulate this point, which btw I think has a lot of merit. Making the huge assumption this is not your primary HN alias, out of curiosity, why did you decide to disassociate yourself from the thread?

I could make up reasons that would seem to bolster my merit, but the reality is that my replies were throttled under another account, lol.

Anyway, I've stopped karma-whoring. And even though I possess the capacity for downvoting under other accounts, I do not use that power.

Admittedly, it means I no longer play into the ranking algorithms, and I can't feed into any persona reputation, but the power to freely disagree, and to add voice to other people's (otherwise silent) downvotes, or contradict downvotes when I feel they're wrong, is the more valuable feature any forum can offer.

Maybe it fulfills other needs and my glandular, gutteral response to people who "are wrong on the internet" overrides the ego of being preened and revered by the community, but the way I see it someone needs to fill this niche. HN has a serious echo-chamber problem, and the prevailing wind needs some yelling into.

I appreciate the response and your efforts. I've been on HN almost 10 years and i sense it is shifting further toward an echo-chamber. You can almost predict the reaction the community (by numbers) will have based on the title or topic of a post. I suspect more and more people are picking up on this judging by comments in threads (or maybe I'm just looking for it). What I wonder is if this is reversion to the mean or has the mean shifted (perhaps as a result of changes in times or demographics). Anyway it is enjoying to watch and I am curious to see how this plays out. My only fear is that people with conflicting ideas take them somewhere else. There is no better place than HN IMHO to see constructive arguments unfold across so many topics.

Two things feed into the echo-chamber pattern, and both are chilling effects. One can be easily augmented and the other cannot.

The first is the voluntary tendency people have about providing their IRL identities. For some this is largely optional, for others, less so, for example when a celebrity is participating as themselves. Real identities means there's some skin in the game for at least some people, requiring a heavier hand in moderation. This part can only be augmented so much, and requires individual users to self censor, disengage, and conceal their own identities when posting an unpopular sentiment. Humans being what they are, this reality will never go away.

The other is the karma system, and this can be changed. And karma really is an unnatural ranking value, since one can pick up on inconsistencies after enough lurking. Whether it should change (or be changed) is arguable. If it's as harsh as it seems, and the effects are that chilling, it may just be an expression of actual human behavior. In which case, it's an early warning alarm, and an analog for what goes down in face-to-face meetings, but remains unspoken. We may not like echo-chambers, but they take shape in the real world too, in which case every social circle carries a shelf life that can probably be quantified by the manner in which this feedback loop widens and deafens its participants by jamming all signal with a noise that drowns out everything else.

I'd hope that last part isn't true (being slightly depressing as it is), and that tweaking the numeric validation could tune the ambient personality of the community's behavior, such that it doesn't drift into irrelevance. It sounds easy enough, but maybe poor execution would warp and deny certain aspects of reality, to produce yet another fiction with unintended consequences.

Anyway, I'm just gonna keep doing whatever.

Interesting quandary: How to respond to an opinion I disagree with, while still satisfying the criteria that I don't come across as "not anti-racist enough?"

HN really doesn't need to politicize the way a 24 hour news organization might. HN is a tech resource, with tangential angles into political factoids. It isn't a journalistic news outlet with a tech blog. While there should be responsibility, focus is more important.

With that in mind the tide here is overwhelmingly non-racist even if not precisely anti-racist. Racism is swiftly downvoted around here, and not readily preserved.

Opening up racial discussions is downvoted, because unless an article and discussion is patently race oriented, it's probably going to politicize and steer discussion away from tech details and into a sociological premise.

Meanwhile, the race politics that do get discussed are almost invariably the familiar territory of how bigoted America is. It's rarely any other sub-topic of racial discussion, and none of the discussion that occurs here solves a problem or highlights surprising facts.

Turning this site into the frontlines in a war waged by either side, will destroy the site. Battlegrounds, after all, are not beautiful places.

By choosing to foment strife, before doing so, ask yourself if your taking something away from more enemies or friends.

My primary objective is to never normalize racism, no matter the context. I see it all the time here, and the subtle stuff constantly slips by and is given a pass. I don't care the community or context, this is never okay. All spaces are politicized whether it is convenient to you or not. By aggressively downvoting anti-racism or simply ignoring the racists the members of the community send an implicit message that racism is acceptable here as long as you look respectable and follow the group conversation rules.

I see that some prefer to live by the sword.

Don't forget to mention the religious diversity, where only 71% of the population belongs to the official Luthern Church of Iceland, while the heathens of the Free Luthern church in Reykjavík and Hafnarfjörður only comprise 5% of the population.

http://px.hagstofa.is/pxen/pxweb/en/Samfelag/Samfelag__menni...