Emancipation For A Post-Capitalist Society

One thing that needs to be better refined for a post-capitalist, protopian future is the process of "emancipation of minors," to quote the official term of art despite its derogatory connotations.  Here are some ideas from Twenty-One Debunked:

First and foremost, let's jettison the terms "emancipation" and especially "minors".  The former has historical connotations related to slavery, while the latter is an ageist slur that implies that young people below some arbitrary age are somehow less important than those above that age limit, as even Hillary Clinton famously pointed out in the 1990s.  Replace the former with "release (of restrictions)" and the latter with "youth" or "underage".  For the same reasons, the terms "access" and "custody" have already been largely replaced by "contact" and "residence", respectively, in most of the Anglosphere. 

Secondly, we need to follow "Alberta rules" and set the default age of majority (legal adulthood) at no higher than 18, and NO age limit for anything can be set even a day higher than 18, except with truly extraordinary justification (like for being President or VP of a country with hair-triggered nuclear weapons and other WMDs), or for senior citizen stuff.  And for any (non-convicted) individuals over 18 to have even one iota of their civil rights abridged or taken away even temporarily, the onus is inherently on the state to prove that the individual is incompetent, NOT on the individual to prove their own competence.  Anything else is inherently ageist, classist, racist (by extension of and intersection with classism), and/or ableist in practice, if not also in theory as well. 

Thirdly, while for young people below the default age of majority, the onus would by definition be on them as individuals to prove their own competence, it needs to be done in a fair and just manner and as objectively as possible.  And doing so needs to also provide at least some sort of alternatives to the traditional and narrow (and increasingly outmoded) milestones of adulthood for generations past.

Twenty-One Debunked's early thought is to have two categories of release:  1) "conditional release", which begins the process, and can still be revoked if the conditions are not met, and 2) "final release", which will happen after a year or two following conditional release, or age 18, whichever occurs sooner, and cannot be revoked.  The minimum requirement to achieve conditional release should be 1) the completion of Tanner Stage 5 of puberty plus a mental age of 16 or higher as measured by any standardized IQ test, college entrance exam, or graduation exit exam, OR 2) a chronological age of 16, whichever occurs sooner.  The minimum age to achieve final release should be a chronological age of 16 or at least one year since conditional release began, whichever occurs later.  All of the other details are of course not cut-and-dried, and should be flexible.  (And unlike Dr. Robert Epstein's paradigm, let's NOT follow the DMV model!  Only the most left-brained, out of touch, ivory-tower academic elites could think that is somehow a good or wise idea, because reasons.)

And when Universal Basic Income (UBI) is eventually implemented, only upon final release (or 18, whichever is sooner) should an individual receive their own unconditional UBI directly.  Rather, upon conditional release, they should receive a "conditional stipend" instead.  (Before any kind of release, by default their share of UBI would go directly to the young person's primary parent or guardian.)

Of course, for as long as we live in "mass society", for all of its myriad flaws, there probably still should be some sort of hard age limits (i.e. purchase ages for alcohol and other psychoactive substances, age of consent, working in truly and inherently dangerous jobs, etc.) that remain true regardless of one's individual status, but nearly all age limits can be at least partially replaced in that regard.  And again, no such age limits should ever be higher than 18.

So what are we waiting for?

What To Do About Lockdown-Induced Arrested Or Delayed Development?

Four years after the official start of the pandemic, two years after practically all restrictions were lifted, and roughly one year after it was declared to be over, the consequences of the lockdowns, quarantines, school closures, mask mandates, and other restrictions can still be seen in its aftermath long after these restrictions were lifted.  This is especially true among children and young people, whose development has been delayed, stunted, or arrested as a result.

It is a truly massive elephant in the room!

Now, the temptation would be to knee-jerkedly raise age limits for various things in response to this, up to and including even the age of majority itself.  You know some people want to.  But that would only exacerbate such developmental delays in practice by kicking the can even further down the road.  The specious idea that "kids today are infantilized, so let's infantilize them even further, because reasons" is absolutely insane.  If anything, we should be doing the opposite and lowering or even abolishing various age limits (within reason), and giving young people a megadose of independence.  That is, go "straight from zero to the Fourth of July", like the song by the band The Killers says, in both the real AND virtual worlds, and certainly no later than age 16.  And at the very, very least, seriously, let's NOT add any more restrictions whatsoever on the already most heavily monitored and (in many ways) restricted generation of children and teens in all of recorded history.

Infancy cannot be re-run.  Childhood cannot be re-run.  And, try as so many adults may, adolescence cannot be re-run either.  The best thing to do is to build a time machine and go back to March 2020 and make it so the lockdowns, school closures, etc. never happened, and that we adopted the "flu strategy" per the original pandemic plan from the get-go per the wisdom of the ages.  Failing that, the second best thing is to rectify things as best we can, yesterday.

The latest attempts to abruptly restrict or revoke teens' access to the virtual world will leave a "social media-shaped hole" in the lives of millions that will most likely NOT be filled with anything good. And after decades of gradually restricting and reducing their access to the real world, it would be a bait-and-switch to disingenuously claim that children and teens will now all of sudden be given more access to the real world in order to fill the void.  Most likely, they will lose access to both the real AND virtual worlds, and increased access to the real world will NOT be forthcoming for a while.

True, the virtual world is no substitute for the real world, as we have all learned the hard way during lockdown.  But as renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males says, "The dangers of both the virtual and real worlds have been wildly exaggerated. Teens don’t need more restrictions."  Truer words have never been spoken.

And will today's youngest generations, and future generations, ever forgive us?

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  What would be a good shorthand to describe what needs to be done?  Twenty-One Debunked thinks we should call it the "Reverse Icelandic Model", that is, the reverse of the vaunted Icelandic Prevention Model (IPM).  When the pandemic and related restrictions and isolation intersected with the existing IPM that had been in place for two decades, it really did a number on the mental health of young people in Iceland.

The View From 2030 (At The Latest)

At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest.  At least in the USA:

18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now.  Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"

Parent:  "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."

18 Year Old:  "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to.  As are people my age in almost every other country as well."

Parent:  "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter.  Different cultures and such.  America has too many problems as it is."

18 Year Old:  "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"

Parent:  "That was then.  Life was cheap back then.  We know better now.  And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"

18 Year Old:  "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard.  Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least.  My generation had neither."

Parent:  "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."

18 Year Old:  "Statistics say otherwise".

Parent:  "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics.  It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""

18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time.  Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."

Parent:  "Life isn't fair.  Deal with it!"

18 Year Old:  "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook?  That doesn't make any sense at all."

Parent:  "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)

18 Year Old:  "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.  Just like you raised me".

Parent:  (speechless)

18 Year Old:  (Mic drop)

One Silver Lining Of The Pandemic And Its Aftermath

Four years after the pandemic began, and roughly one year after the very last traces of the illiberal restrictions have been removed, one can observe that one particular and very platitudinous phrase seems to have vanished entirely from our lexicon.  It was a phrase that long predated the pandemic, and first became common about 40 years ago, which was used to cover any number of illiberal policies, most notably the 21 drinking age.  So what is it?

"If it saves even ONE life, it's worth it"

Those nine words have clearly been a very, very slippery slope towards totalitarianism, which really came to a head during the pandemic.  And both sides of the lockdown and mandates debate have since given that idea up for the time being recently.  Thus, we may actually have a chance temporarily to finally end other illiberal policies like the 21 drinking age and similar abominations.  Pendulum Theory can therefore be used to our advantage. 

Better thing to replace it with:  "Safety Third".  So what's first and second then?  Liberty and justice for all, not necessarily in that order.

What are we waiting for?

Does Cannabis Really Cause Heart Attacks And Strokes?

A new study is making the rounds claiming so, apparently.  And unlike most previous studies on the matter, this one was not only very large, but was also able to fully tease out the massive confounding factor of tobacco as well.  It was run on both a representative sample as well as re-run on the subset of never-tobacco users, and controlled for many other variables as well.  So what did it find?

Daily cannabis users had a 25% higher risk of heart attack and 42% higher risk for stroke compared with nonusers overall.  For never tobacco users who were used cannabis daily, the odds ratios were higher, but confidence intervals were also much wider as well.  As for nondaily users, the numbers were proportionally much lower relative to days used per month, with those using weekly or less having barely any statistically increased risk for either cardiovascular outcome relative to nonusers.

And to that we give a resounding....(yawn).

Now, we all know that correlation is not causation, and this was a cross-sectional study that could not possibly rule out every other explanation for the association, nor determine temporality of the association.  And given how in all of the analyses of the study, the odds ratios were either 1) below 2.0, 2) had fairly wide confidence intervals, or 3) both, it is possible that the results were still at least partly (if not entirely) due to selection bias, reporting bias, or residual or unmeasured confounding, if not chance.  For example, while tobacco (which increased risk), alcohol (which appeared to decrease risk), and a host of individual health and demographic variables were statistically controlled for, the use or abuse of any other psychoactive substances (licit or illicit) was NOT controlled for, nor were any dietary factors.

And of course, as the study was done on BRFSS survey data, another major limitation was that it, by definition, only measured cardiovascular outcomes among those who lived to tell about it.  While longitudinal cohort studies in the past generally did not find any robust and significant differences in all-cause death rates between cannabis users in general versus nonusers, unlike in the infamous case of tobacco which has been well-known for decades.

In fact, interestingly enough, when the sample was restricted to those who never used tobacco, while daily cannabis users still fared worse, the lowest (best) point estimates for each of the cardiovascular outcomes studied were actually found among the nondaily cannabis users, not the nonusers, in the unadjusted results. And of course, that nuance was glossed over and only mentioned briefly.

That said, regardless, as a wise man once said, I have still never met a daily (or near-daily) cannabis user that could not benefit from cutting back a bit.  In other words, something about Aristotle and moderation comes to mind.  Food for thought indeed. 

UPDATE:  Another recent study, from Canada in 2023, also found a statistically significant and dose-dependent correlation between the severity of cannabis use disorder (i.e. abuse and/or dependence) and various cardiovascular disease outcomes.  But of course, the majority of cannabis users do not develop cannabis use disorders, let alone  severe ones.  And the study did not control for confounding from tobacco use either, so no causal relationship could be proven.  Either way, both studies lend themselves far more to a commonsense message of moderation, NOT the usual unscientific "no safe level" hysterics.

UPDATE 2:  One confounder that is difficult to fully measure and account for statistically is STRESS, which is a real killer when it becomes chronic.  And since one of the reasons why people use cannabis is to relieve stress, well, there is the biggest confounder right there.  Our verdict?  Cannabis is most likely no worse in this regard than, and probably less deadly than, the caffeine in coffee, tea, and elsewhere, which is about as legal and unrestricted as one can get. 

America Is Still Drowning In The Bottle

Americans are still drowning in the bottle to this day, and paying a heavy price for it.  While the pandemic and especially the lockdowns were clearly gasoline on the fire, that fire has been burning for a very long time before that.  The ageist abomination that is 21 drinking age, and all of its illiberal ancillary laws, has clearly done NOTHING to stem that tide in the long run.  And it's truly no coincidence that alcohol (of all types, but especially hard liquor) is now the cheapest it has been in many, many decades relative to inflation and (especially) income.  That's largely because alcohol taxes have greatly lagged behind and were thus eroded by inflation in recent decades, with the tax on distilled spirits lagging the very most of all.

To quote the latest CDC report on the matter:

Average annual number of deaths from excessive alcohol use, including partially and fully alcohol-attributable conditions, increased approximately 29% from 137,927 during 2016–2017 to 178,307 during 2020–2021, and age-standardized death rates increased from approximately 38 to 48 per 100,000 population. During this time, deaths from excessive drinking among males increased approximately 27%, from 94,362 per year to 119,606, and among females increased approximately 35%, from 43,565 per year to 58,701.

Thus, as Twenty-One Debunked has long advocated, we need to raise the alcohol taxes across the board, and harmonize them all based on alcohol content.  To raise just the beer tax alone, for example, would result in drinkers simply switching to liquor, similar to how minimum unit pricing in Scotland disproportionately affected strong cider and perversely incentivized switching to liquor.  MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) has long heavily beaten the drum (though not so much recently) for raising the beer tax, but has also largely been strangely silent on the distilled spirits tax.  Perhaps some alleged palm-greasing from both the liquor industry and/or foreign beer industry may be at work here?  Things that (should) make you go, hmmmm.....

We advocate raising all federal alcohol taxes to about $30 per proof-gallon, equal to the inflation-adjusted value for the distilled spirits tax in 1991 (in 2023 dollars), the last time it was raised. That would add anywhere between one and two dollars (depending on alcohol content), to the price of a six-pack of beer, a gallon of wine, or a fifth of liquor, while also incentivizing reduced-alcohol beers and wines.  And while that may not be very much of a difference to a moderate drinker, for heavy drinkers it sure adds up, as it also does for the youngest drinkers as well.  And contrary to what some believe, the price elasticity of demand for alcohol is NOT zero or trivial, and the public health benefits of higher alcohol taxes and prices are well-known and established.

To sweeten the deal, we support a relatively reduced tax rate for the smallest producers, and we also support tax incentives for producers who fortify their beverages with thiamine (vitamin B1) and perhaps other vitamins as well.  And we would also support phasing in alcohol tax hikes a bit more gradually if that is the only way to get them passed.  But raise these taxes, we certainly must.

(And, of course, we also also lower the drinking age to 18 yesterday, full stop.  We are still Twenty-One Debunked, after all.)

It is true that Thomas Jefferson once famously said, "no nation is drunken where wine is cheap".  Granted.  But the second half of that very same quote was, "and none sober when the dearness [expensiveness] of wine substitutes ardent [distilled] spirits as the common beverage.  It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey."  And now in 2024, it would seem that ALL categories of alcoholic beverages are too cheap for America's own good, and a fortiori for ardent (distilled) spirits today.

Cannabis Legalization Is STILL NOT Crazy-Making In Canada OR The USA

Reefer Madness? More like Reefer Sanity. Yet another study finds that cannabis legalization in Canada (where the age limit is 18 or 19 depending on the province*) did NOT result in any increase in cannabis-related psychosis.  This dovetails nicely with several previous studies in both Canada and the USA.

In other words, the remaining prohibitionists and fearmongers are looking less and less like Cassandra, and more and more like Chicken Little now.

(*Quebec had initially set it at 18 in 2018, but they raised it to 21 in January 2020, with no grandfather clause.  Alberta remains 18 to this day, and all other provinces are 19, mostly matching the drinking ages.)

UPDATE:  A previous Ontario study found no increase in emergency room visits for "cannabis-induced psychosis" during the first phase of "restricted legalization" in 2018-2019, but did find a modest increase during the "commercialization" phase (notably, when edibles and concentrates became available) in 2020-2021.  Of course, the latter increase cannot be disentangled from the effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, and many if not most of those visits are simply from inexperienced users taking too many edibles in a short time and having a bad reaction.  Remember, start low, go slow!  

Oh and do NOT confuse THIS either!

The Invisible Knapsack (Updated)

Three decades ago, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh coined the term "invisible knapsack" to refer to the subtle and not-so-subtle advantages that come with white privilege and male privilege resulting from inequality.  She describes such privilege as being "like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks".  The idea is that while we are generally taught that racism and sexism put some people (i.e. women and people of color) at a disadvantage, we are often taught to remain blissfully unaware of its corollary advantages that accrue to white males.  Hence, the "invisible knapsack" of privilege.

We at Twenty-One Debunked couldn't help but notice just how much this metaphor also relates to America's 21 drinking age and the "over-21 privilege" that results.  Being well over 21 myself, as the webmaster and founder of Twenty-One Debunked I have put together a list of advantages in the invisible knapsack of over-21 privilege that people like myself carry every day.   We have updated this list to include tobacco and cannabis as well now.  As a person over 21, as long as I have a valid ID to prove it:

1. I can buy alcoholic beverages at any store that sells them, in any quantity I wish.
2. I can do the same with tobacco and cannabis as well if I desire to do so.  I can even openly smoke both in some public places if I want to.
3. I can enter pretty much any bar or nightclub of my choosing without fearing that people of my age group cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
4. If I do not want to associate with people under 21, I may frequent numerous establishments that ban younger people from entering.
5. I can get a hotel room with relatively little difficulty as long as I can afford it, since hotels are less likely to cast aspersions on me due to my age.
6. I am never asked to speak for all of the people in my age group, nor do I have to worry about my individual behavior reflecting on my entire age group.
7. I can legally host a drinking party with my friends, as long as all the guests are over 21.
8. I can join my co-workers for Happy Hour after work, and even talk about it at work, without any sort of shame.
9. When I go out with people under 21, it is generally understood that one (or more) of them will be the designated driver instead of me.
10. Generally speaking, I can drink alcoholic beverages fairly openly without having to worry about getting arrested, fined, jailed, expelled, fired, having my driver's license revoked, or being publicly humiliated.  Ditto for smoking tobacco and/or cannabis as well.
11. As long as I am not driving or operating machinery, I can legally get as drunk (or stoned, or both) as I please in many states. 
12. Even in states where public drunkenness is technically illegal, the cops are unlikely to arrest me unless my behavior is really out of control.  There is no equivalent to "internal possession" laws for my age group.
13. If I do manage to get in alcohol-related trouble on campus, which is far less likely for me, I will likely face lesser penalties, and I will not have to worry about my parents being notified without my consent.
14. If I think one of my over-21 peers may have alcohol poisoning, there would be no reason for me to hesitate to call 911 for fear of the law (and vice-versa).
15. I can have a drink or two (or maybe even three!) before driving without having to worry about being over the legal limit for DUI. 
16. Even if I drive while over the limit, I can be assured that drunk drivers in my age group will NOT be the highest law enforcement priority.  I can just take the back roads and hope for the best, and know that the law enforcement statistics are largely on my side as long as it's not a major holiday or the end of the month.
17. If I choose to drive drunk, I can know that I am statistically far more likely to kill or maim someone under 21 than the other way around.
18. Even if I had several convictions for DUI or drunken violence, I can rest assured that I will still be allowed to buy and consume alcohol as I please.
19. I enjoy less scrutiny over my own behavior, because I live in a society in which young people are scapegoated for adult problems.
20. I do not have to worry about being a good role model when it comes to drinking, since people under 21 can be punished (often severely) for emulating me.
21. To really top it off, I have an easier time getting my hands on semiautomatic assault rifles and dangerous weapons in general, especially handguns.  In fact, in some states, I can even carry concealed weapons in a bar!
22. Finally, I have a much better chance of being taken seriously on the issue of lowering the drinking age, or any other age limit for that matter, without being knee-jerkedly accused of selfishness or immaturity.  (Though to be fair, if I am much older than 21, say 30+, I might in some cases be fallaciously accused of being a "creep" or "groomer" with ulterior motives by people with their minds in the gutter, which says a LOT more about them than it does about me.)

And the list goes on.  As we see, the 21 drinking age is not just about disadvantaging people under 21, but also giving unearned advantages to people over 21 as well.  And while some of these advantages are clearly positive rights that should be extended to everyone (or at least all adults over 18), others are not "rights" at all, but wrongs that are an unfortunate byproduct of setting arbitrary age limits and of adultism in general.  Still others could be considered either rights or wrongs depending on the context.  And let's not forget the luxury of being able to blissfully ignore the issue entirely.

So, are the advantages found in this invisible knapsack really worth it?  Many people over 21 would say yes, but upon closer examination these advantages actually come at a hefty price, even for people over 21.  Just think about social host liability laws, other annoying ancillary laws, ubiquitous ID checks, millions of tax dollars wasted on enforcement, loss of social cohesion, karma, and highly dubious legal precedent that can be used to make our supposedly free country even more of a police state via turnkey tyranny.  In fact, the only people over 21 who, on balance, really benefit from the status quo are the ones who least deserve to benefit--those who drive drunk or otherwise behave irresponsibly when it comes to alcohol, as well as those parents who would rather stick their heads in the sand than teach their kids how to drink responsibly.

Do you hear that?  That's (hopefully) the sound of the pro-21 crowd throwing up all of the proverbial Kool-Aid that they drank long ago.

(Mic drop)

How To Solve The Completely Contrived Problem Of Unlicensed Weed Stores

Though cannabis legalization has been a positive development overall, in many places, the black market still exists to one degree or another, albeit much less so than when cannabis was illegal.  Nowhere else is this more true than in New York, whose uniquely arcane, difficult, and disastrously sluggish rollout of cannabis licenses statewide has led to a massive proliferation of unlicensed weed shops, especially in NYC where such shops outnumber licensed ones by a whopping 250+ to one.  Even in early 2024, this state of affairs still persists. So how does one solve such a bedeviling problem?

Enter Rear Admiral Luther E. Gregory.  In the 1930s, Prohibition was repealed, and Washington State along with other states were now faced with the task of shutting down the well-established bootleggers and speakeasies that persisted even after Repeal.   Admiral Gregory was asked to head the state's Liquor Control Board, and given carte blanche to come up with a solution, one which worked surprisingly well in fact:

1. End Prohibition, first of all.
2. Give amnesty and issue licenses to anyone willing to play by the state's rules, whether former bootleggers or otherwise.
3. Set the alcohol taxes as low as possible at first, the lowest in the country in fact.
4. Punish sellers who don't play by the rules, with an iron fist--i.e. blacklisting scofflaws from ever selling liquor in the state again.
5. After holding down alcohol taxes for three years, abruptly raise taxes to the point where they're now the highest in the nation.

Problem solved.  The legal market proved to be competitive with what was left of the black market, and drinkers overwhelmingly preferred the former over the latter, driving the latter out of business.  And the black market never came back even after raising taxes dramatically.  Looking back, it should have been so obvious indeed.

Substitute "cannabis" for "alcohol", and there is literally no reason whatsoever why this strategy would not work in this day and age.  And instead of holding down taxes for three years, merely one or two years should be sufficient to get the same results, even if the hike is automatically scheduled.  Doing so would minimize the greatest risk of the strategy, namely, that the fledgling legal cannabis industry would then become so powerful that they would resist and successfully quash any attempt to raise taxes in the future.  They would not become that powerful in just a year or two, and probably not for several years, but the black market could be easily quashed in that timeframe all the same.  But most importantly, cut the ridiculous red tape and, and make cannabis licenses easier and cheaper to get, particularly for the current gray market shops.

Now over to you, New York.  Remember, the cart does NOT go before the horse.

UPDATE:  We are now up to a grand total of 420 blog posts since 2009!  Those who still don't know the significance of that number are free to Google it.

UPDATE 2:  Another good idea:  allow cannabis with less than 10% THC to be sold anywhere that beer and wine is licensed to be sold (half-license), and cannabis with both greater and less than than 10% THC to be sold at dedicated liquor stores and/or dedicated cannabis stores (full license).  That will of course also incentivize the production and sale of lower-potency weed alongside the current high-octane weed and edibles and concentrates, instead perversely driving cannabis producers to grow exclusively strong flower and reflexively extracting THC from all of their leaf and trim into strong edibles and concentrates (as opposed to simply selling it as a loss leader).