Re:Iceland radically cut teenage drug use
by vikramkr on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:29AM
(#22575952)
We're not discrediting it because it's Scandinavia, we're discrediting it because iceland has a miniscule population and actual effects of interventions are difficult to meaningfully tease out from chance on this scale. I looked it up, and I'm unsure if in reading this right, but Iceland has 360,000 people? That's it? If I'm not reading that wrong, my small suburb of ny has 1% of the population of the entire country - and size effects matter in terms of how easy strategies are to implement and whether changes are from natural variance or real fundamental progress.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Iceland radically cut teenage drug use
by robocat on Saturday March 14, 2020 @01:21PM
(#22576884)
> we're discrediting it because iceland has a miniscule population
So find one or more groups of 360,000 people in your country and start testing it on small parts of your population.
Don’t just ignore the findings because you can’t apply it to your whole country at once (which is a bad idea anyway: e.g. some nation-wide education changes at home have been big mistakes).
Re:Iceland radically cut teenage drug use
by AstralStorm on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:35AM
(#22576003)
I find it more curious if there won't be sequelae such as overweight rates going up instead. That would be interesting.
Iceland is not that small. It's comparable to many medium sized cities in Europe, or a district of a big one.
Re:Iceland radically cut teenage drug use
by vikramkr on Saturday March 14, 2020 @11:43AM
(#22576055)
You're comparing a country to medium sized cities though - on a continent with a population of 750 million people, versus a country like America with 350 million, it's like 350 thousand. What small City governments can do and how they govern is different from alrger cities like NY, different again from states and from the monster of the federal government or the European union