> If you look at other things like alcohol use, things don't look good.

What? Why is alcohol not regarded as a drug in this kind of research environment? Is the aim of this research to save teenagers from drug abuse, or is the aim to have lower numbers of illegal-drug-abuse?

Overall, this seems questionable at best. Not letting teenagers spending unsupervised time surely has ripple effects in most, if not all, areas of society, the most of which I'd consider highly undesirable (not granting autonomy leads to severe psychological issues down the line)

Given that the article talks about Icelandic kids no longer being heavy drinkers and the fact that nabla9 can read Finnish and so is probably not a naive English speaker, that sentence may just be an erroneous version of an intended "If you look at other things than alcohol use".

Both "like" and "than" express comparisons, that may cause confusion.

Tangent: this neatly illustrates that trying to express yourself in a foreign language and failing outright, such that what you said doesn't make any sense, is not actually the biggest problem you can run into. It's much worse when you try to express yourself and come out with a perfectly-formed sentence that means something quite different from what you were hoping.

It's easy for people to make adjustments allowing for your badly-formed sentences. It's much harder for people to make adjustments allowing for the possibility that even though you said something natural, you might have meant something else entirely.

The linked article stated that the impetus for the research was mainly a long-standing issue with the alcohol consumption levels of the young, so I think it's an issue they consider very important and related to drugs, but they separate it as drugs and alcohol have a different social and legal stigma and thus aren't directly comparable to each other.

As a Finn I wouldn't take any findings from our social scientists very seriously. By treating teens and children like adults they have already ruined our once great education system.

I suggest everyone to ignore any criticism that uses broad brush like you do.

That's a little self-referential, no?

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Iceland also has a total population less than any major city in the US until you get far down the line into 2nd biggest cities in states or cities in small states.

Not to mention entire state populations or anything close to any other relevant country’s total population.

Which matters a lot when taking lessons from other countries IMO (including banking and restrictions like gun ownership). It’s like taking lessons running a startup vs a multinational corporation.

The total population matters only when you measure effects that change when the scale changes.

I see no reason why small cities and countries can't be used as examples in youth health. They are often perfect places to used for testing things.

> The total population matters only when you measure effects that change when the scale changes.

> I see no reason why small cities and countries can't be used as examples in youth health.

This is not correct; you're assuming that every location always expresses the average of every effect.

In reality, small absolute populations mean more variance in the measurement/expression of everything. This is why the top and bottom of lists of statistics per capita are always dominated by small populations. Doesn't matter what statistic you're measuring.

This makes it very dangerous to try to generalize from a finding in an anomalously small population.

Iceland only has about 50,000 teenagers.

"Sample size!" is absolutely a valid criticism.

It also is not geographically diverse... over half the national population lives within a 10km circle around the capital.

Presumably population density is the more relevant factor.

Population density of Reykjavik is 3,077/km². Most the population lives in urban areas. You can basically treat Iceland as City State.

https://statice.is/statistics/population/inhabitants/municip...

With increased size, government becomes less efficient (as you need to have more layers of management) - so any policies that require implementation by the administrative bodies should work better in Iceland than in countries with one/two/three/four orders of magnitude more people.

It's not that the scale changes, it's that the statistics count too few events to properly handle external factors. When you're looking a cohorts of around 4000 people, small things can change things by multiple percent.

It's almost as if even nonprofits were interested in furthering their own agenda instead of rigorously seeking the truth in order to inform people.

Great comment, by the way. Thank you for the summary.

Were DNA tests made? Iceland is a homogeneous society. It's possible that nurture doesn't explain the cause but rather nature.

Particularly with respect to alcoholism, that it was quite a very long trend downward, and the fact there's only 400k people it would seem there's been a generational and fundamental change in societal attitude towards alcohol.

It means 'everyone' was thinking about it different over time, and this thinking would have manifested in a variety of policies, awareness, socialization, and probably a lot of 'indirect shaming' i.e. getting alcohol distributors to realize the consequences, bar owners taking underage drinker more seriously, police actually nabbing drunk kids as opposed to turning a blind eye. IE 'hey, we drink here in Iceland, it's normal' to 'we have a drinking problem, let's talk to our kids about it'.

We've seen a significant change in all the Western world on smoking for example, so it's no surprise they couldn't change drinking and tobacco over time.

The marijuana thing is different obviously given the more liberal attitudes in many places, but consider the supply issue in Iceland, as compared to Canada. In Canada, there are grow-ops everywhere with low-level organized crime involved sometimes (not always). In Iceland, it just maybe 'that much more difficult' to get a hold of, thereby limiting the possibility for weed to establish it's behavioural premise as 'being cool' or whatever. The critical mass might not have developed.

It's highly unlikely that 'one policy' was the deal maker on any of these issues, though surely some had more of an effect than others. For example, raising the drinking age by 2 years will have not much effect if it's a social custom to simply ignore those rules anyhow. But raising the drinking age, coupled with public awareness, with messages from law enforcement to alcohol stores saying 'we mean it, we will find out' to random checks to make sure they're following the rules whereas there were none before etc. - this will surely have some change.

I object to anything that the UN has to say about 'Children's Rights', the wellbeing of children is a function of the overall wellbeing of a society, and Iceland, like other Nordic countries, is way ahead of the curve already. Ironically, only such advanced countries would even care about what the UN has to say in the first place. The UN is a highly politicized body of people usually very far removed from any given situation and though I don't doubt their intentions, these things become entirely academic in their hands. The 'real good' they will do is in developing places which are in need of economic development, which in turn provides the basis for the wellbeing of children and all citizens and not just in terms of 'rights' but in everything else as well.

Any nation that has managed to create some kind of positive social change is probably worth studying, that there is ambiguity is fine, the facts are what they are i.e. that substance abuse of certain kinds has dropped quite a lot. That evidence is the underlying bit of credibility which makes the mystery worth solving, or at least learning from.