Monday, August 2, 2021
The No-Brainer Solution To The College Question (2021 Edition)
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Another New Study Confirms: Legalizing Cannabis Not A Disaster After All
Thursday, May 27, 2021
Have A Safe And Happy Memorial Day Weekend
This coming Monday, May 31, is Memorial Day, often known as the unofficial first day of summer and National BBQ Day. But let's remember what it really is--a day to honor all of the men and women of our armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, past and present. And that of course includes all of those who died serving our country before they were legally old enough to drink. Let us all take a moment of silence to honor them.
As for Candy Lightner, the ageist turncoat founder of MADD who had the chutzpah and hubris to go on national TV in 2008 and publicly insult our troops, may her name and memory be forever blotted out.And as always, arrive alive, don't drink and drive. It's just not worth it, period. And it's very simple to prevent. If you plan to drive, don't drink, and if you plan to drink, don't drive. It's not rocket science. Designate a sober driver, call a cab or rideshare, crash on the couch, or even walk if you have to. Or don't drink--nobody's got a gun to your head.
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
"No Safe Level" Is A Red Flag For Junk Science
Sunday, May 16, 2021
25, You Say? Let's Nip That In The Bud
A handful of psychiatrists in Minnestota, where cannabis has not yet been legalized for recreational use (but is currently being considered), is calling for the age limit to be 25 when it is legalized. They cite anecdotal evidence of young patients with psychosis that they claim is caused by today's high-potency weed. And here is why they are, in a word, wrong:
- First of all, these psychoses that they cite are occurring despite recreational cannabis remaining illegal in Minnesota for all ages. Legalizing it with an utterly unrealistic age limit of 25 will only preserve and entrench the current black market while worsening criminal justice inequities, both age and racial disparities.
- The brain continues developing well into the 30s and 40s, and the risk period for schizophrenia continues until about 30, so 25 is arbitrary.
- While excessive cannabis use can be harmful at any age, and starting use before age 18 and especially before 15 is likely more harmful than starting at 18 or older, there is really no clear and convincing evidence that using it at 18-20 is any worse than using at 21-24 or 25+, especially for light or moderate use. To claim otherwise is unscientific, disingenuous, and really pushes the limits of the precautionary principle.
- As we have noted many times before, the relationship between cannabis and psychosis is quite complex, and far more nuanced than Reefer Madness. Though there is likely a tiny, exquisitely vulnerable sliver of the population that should really avoid weed like the plague at any age, that is no reason for blanket bans or restrictions (by age or otherwise) for legal adults. That would be unscientific and unjust.
- And finally, if today's high-potency weed is in fact the culprit in an alleged (and far from certain) recent increase in psychosis among young people, the solution is NOT to raise the age limit and force it deeper underground, but to put a cap (say, 10% or 15%) on the potency of THC on legal weed (and perhaps also setting a minimum level of CBD, which counteracts many of the adverse effects of too much THC), and/or taxing it based on THC/CBD levels. And also warn people who are at increased risk of psychosis as well via honest public education messaging without sensational fearmongering.
Sunday, May 9, 2021
Latest California Smoking Age Study More Smoke Than Fire
Last month, a new study looking at the results of California's smoking age hike from 18 to 21 in 2016 turns out to be less than meets the eye. The study, looking at BRFSS survey data for 18-20 year olds pre versus post implementation, found that, compared to 21-23 year olds in California and to 18-20 year olds in the eight comparison states, 18-20 year olds did not see any significant change in the rate of decline of current or ever smoking, but did see significantly faster declines in the rates of daily smoking in the three years after the age limit was hiked to 21 versus before implementation. Interestingly, vaping was not examined at all due to apparent data gaps at the time, so this study says absolutely nothing about vaping.
While the part about daily smoking sounds impressive on the surface, one should keep in mind that cigarette taxes were hiked by $2.00/pack in 2016 (effective April 2017), and generally the younger a person is, the more price-sensitive they are since they tend to have less disposable income, and furthermore the earlier they are in the course of their tobacco habits. So it would stand to reason that the tax hike alone, which makes regular and especially daily smoking that much more of an expensive burden on the smoker, would have had a larger impact on 18-20 year olds than 21-23 year olds in California. That would also explain why current or ever smoking (which were essentially not affected at all) would be much less affected than daily smoking as well.
Of note, Pennsylvania had also raised their cigarette tax in 2016 yet still kept their age limit at 18 (until July 2020, that is), yet interestingly that state was NOT one of the eight comparison states. The results of this study would thus likely have been very different if Pennsylvania was one of the comparison states.
Alternatively, some of the progression to daily smoking may simply have been delayed by a few years by the age limit hike, yielding no real long-run benefits, kinda like some studies have strongly suggested about drunk driving deaths when the drinking age was raised to 21. Indeed, by 2019 the daily smoking rate among 21-23 year olds was actually a bit higher than it was in 2016.
And as we have previously noted, in NYC and elsewhere, raising the smoking age to 21 does not seem to actually reduce high school smoking rates compared with keeping it 18, so the "trickle-down" theory that is often used as a specious justification for Tobacco 21 laws is very unlikely to be the case in California (or anywhere else) either.
Thus, this study is more smoke than fire. And regardless, we at Twenty-One Debunked would still oppose the 21 smoking age on principle regardless of its effects. Young adults who are old enough to go to war, be tried as adults, etc. should NOT have the state dictating what otherwise legal substances they choose to put into their own bodies at all, period. Seriously.
And that is a hill we will die on.
Saturday, May 8, 2021
Et Tu, DeSantis?
Florida's controversial Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has been a bit of a mixed bag overall. The True Spirit of America Party (TSAP) is, to put it mildly, not exactly a fan of Republicans in general and Trump supporters in particular, but has nonetheless generally agreed with his light-touch, focused protection handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has actually yielded a lower cumulative per capita death rate than the national average (and much lower than several lockdown states) despite Florida's significantly older and fatter population. And in terms of excess all-cause mortality, wide-open Florida even did better than the overall strictest state of all, California. There are some bad things about DeSantis of course, such as his latest Georgia-style voter suppression efforts and his heavy-handed and poorly-written anti-rioting law that arguably throws out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, but generally he is not too terrible by current low-bar Republican standards.
And of course, Twenty-One Debunked in particular has supported the fact that he was one of the most prominent holdouts in keeping the legal smoking age at 18 despite the trend towards raising it to 21 at the local, state, and eventually federal levels. After all, he has previously opposed and vetoed every single attempt to raise Florida's smoking age any higher than 18. Well, until now, that is. Like most other governors, as of today, DeSantis has officially SOLD OUT and signed into law a bill that raises Florida's smoking and vaping age to 21, effective October 1, 2021. True, this new law does have an exemption for military service members aged 18-20, making it a shade less bad than some other states, but we still oppose this law on principle like we oppose all inherently ageist Tobacco 21 laws, period.
One could argue that any state law that sets the age limit below 21 is effectively void since the federal smoking age has been 21 since December 2019, but that is beside the point. A state that chooses to remain 18 in spite of the federal Tobacco 21 law is a principled state with integrity, and is at the very least NOT helping the federal government enforce such an ageist abomination. Today, Florida lost that status.
DeSantis is now the 34th governor to raise the age limit for tobacco and vaping to 21, bringing it to now more than two out of three states who set it at 21. With "allies" like him (and Trump, who raised the federal age limit to 21), who really needs enemies?
Sunday, May 2, 2021
NEWS FLASH: Vaping Black Market Concoctions Is Bad For Your Lungs
That is what the conclusion should have been from the latest vaping study finding that cannabis vaping is more harmful to the lungs than nicotine vaping, cannabis smoking, and tobacco smoking. But that does not appear to be the way the mainstream media is presenting the study, without any sort of nuance or detail. The study did not distinguish between black market, gray market, and legitimate market products, nor did it bother to examine or even mention the old-fashioned way of vaping weed (namely heating regular and pure whole bud in a loose-leaf vaporizer).
Have we really forgotten the primary culprit in the EVALI (vaping illness) epidemic in 2019, namely questionable additives and diluents such as Vitamin E acetate (et al.) that were almost entirely found in black and gray market cannabis vape oil concoctions? Especially since EVALI was significantly less common in states where cannabis is fully legal compared to states where it is not, as there are by definition much safer alternatives to the black market in legal states (though a significant black market still remains in highly taxed and tightly regulated states like California as well, or at least did in 2019-2020).
The solution is really quite simple: legalize cannabis 18+, ban any additives that have not been proven safe for human consumption via inhalation, implement strict quality control standards, don't overtax it, charge excessive licensing fees, or otherwise have excessive barriers to entry into the legitimate market, and crack down on any remaining illicit markets.
And for users, as we have said before, DO NOT vape, juul, or dab anything you find on the black market!
Problem solved. We ignore these facts at our peril.
Friday, April 30, 2021
What About Tobacco, Again?
The Biden administration is currently considering two new sweeping FDA rules affecting combustible tobacco cigarettes: 1) banning menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, and 2) reducing nicotine levels, presumably to a non-addictive level. Where we stand on these two potential changes is as follows:
The first one, Twenty-One Debunked is on the fence about that, as we can see both sides of that issue, noting that Canada has already banned menthols and the EU has phased them out, while also noting the inconvenient truth of racism and how it intersects with this issue as well. The flavored cigars we generally lean against banning, while for menthol cigarettes we believe that if they must do it for whatever reason, they should phase them out more gradually and allow existing stocks to be sold well after the designated "quit date" for selling newly manufactured menthols. Also, possession and consumption of menthols should NOT be banned or punished, and police should NOT go out of their way to target the sale of menthols or "loosies" in underprivileged neighborhoods with people of color.
(For what it's worth, quit rates in Canada have improved significantly since their menthol ban, particularly among formerly menthol-preferring smokers. That lends credence to the idea that menthol enhances the overall addictiveness of tobacco by making the high nicotine levels less harsh on the throat, which also makes it easier for young experimenters to pick up the habit in the first place.)
The second one, reducing nicotine levels, Twenty-One Debunked has cautiously supported since 2014, and we still do, provided that all of the following are true:
- The phasedown of nicotine to a non-addictive level is done gradually and stepwise over a period of at least a year, in at least three stages.
- The sale of existing domestic stocks of cigarettes above the nicotine cap can continue at least six months after the "quit date" for manufacturing and importing cigarettes above that cap (at each step of the phasedown).
- The possession/consumption of cigarettes with nicotine levels above the cap is NOT banned or punished.
- The only other tobacco products subject to the same cap shall be little cigars (below a certain size), perhaps all cigars with a smoke pH below 8, and possibly loose roll-your-own cigarette tobacco and/or pipe tobacco with a pH below 8. Nothing else, period. We would be fine with, and would actually prefer, if only pre-rolled commercial cigarettes and little cigars (the size of cigarettes) were subject to the nicotine cap.
- The addition of any harmful or addictive additives to all newly manufactured tobacco products is banned effective immediately as well. All additives must meet the same standards as for additives to food. Radioactive fertilizers for growing tobacco must also be banned as well.
Sunday, March 28, 2021
More Proof That Curfews Don't Really Reduce Crime
Curfews, especially youth curfews for people under an arbitrary age limit, have long been a solution in search of a problem. They have been touted as a panacea for all sorts of social ills, most notably street crime. And the evidence for that has been very weak at best, with plenty of evidence against it in fact.
But now we have the strongest "natural experiment" with the extreme, unprecedented, all-ages COVID lockdowns, curfews, and other restrictions in 2020 that did not exist in 2019 and prior years. If curfews and similar policies actually reduced crime, we would have seen a sharp decrease in crime in 2020 relative to the average of previous years. So what were the results of this yearlong natural experiment?
Well, you might wanna sit down before reading this. Turns out, crime actually went way up in 2020 compared to the past few years, particularly homicides. Preliminary data from the first half of 2020 put the per capita homicide rate in the USA at a 15 year high (highest since 2005), and the second half of the year may turn out to be even worse still, possibly even the highest since the late 1990s. And of course, plenty of rioting as well. Even mass shootings and hate crimes are up as well, and if the first three months of 2021 are any indication, this very ugly trend unfortunately may not subside anytime soon, and alas may very well persist well after all such restrictions are finally lifted.
Even the supposedly good news about reported rapes being down in the first half of 2020 needs to be qualified. Given how the vast majority of rapes occur behind closed doors and go unreported even in a normal year, the apparent decrease in 2020 may simply be an artifact of an increase in underreporting due to lockdown, especially since domestic violence and child abuse both appear to have increased significantly during lockdown. We will ultimately see when the 2020 survey results for NCVS and NISVS are released, either later in 2021 or even as late as 2022.
Back in April 2020, anecdotal evidence of course suggested that crime was down in some areas. But clearly that decrease was short-lived, and then the opposite occurred. Whether it is due to pent-up rage, restlessness, boredom, unemployment, fewer "eyes on the street", destruction of community, or all of the above, these sorts of authoritarian and illiberal policies clearly do more harm than good on balance.
So let this be the final nail in the coffin for lockdowns, curfews, and similar restrictions. If curfews are to ever be used to fight crime and/or civil disorder, they need to be very limited, local, nuanced, and short-term--if they are to even be used at all.
QED