Originally Posted By: eskimo270

Originally Posted By: HippieKiller

Originally Posted By: MarksOutdoors


It would also lead to increased usage from the increased ease of access... More tools stolen from work trucks and taken to pawn shops to buy heroine with...


Says the fear-mongers & big pharma.

Again, look at the real life example of Portugal where drug use has been at a steady decline since decriminalization as well as lower crime rates. In fact, the crime rate in the US is nearly double that of Portugal.
help me understand this, you are using Portugal as an example for us to follow and validate it by proclaiming that the crime rate in the US is almost twice what portugals is, another way to put it is that portugals crime rate is a little over half of what the US'S is, you do realize that portugals population is a little over 10 million folks and the US is a little over 300 million? Our crime rate is less than twice what portugals is and our population is 30 times that of Portugal, seems like to me we don't need to be following their lead.


I don't think you understand statistics.

Let me try to explain.

Normalization is a thing that people who do research perform so that all of the statistics we present are comparable. The rate is a ratio of the population - not a set number that needs to be scaled up or down - that number is already scaled so all you have to do is compare the rate. The occurrence is a raw (not normalized) number that would need to be normalized (or scaled up/down).

When someone says "statistically speaking" that is what they mean. If our education system was where it needs to be - everyone would not only already know that - they would also be equipped with the knowledge needed to check the math and make sure that the study was not intentionally skewed. The math is explained in the "methodology" portion of the research so those who have a decent education can take a look and see whether it's a good study or just some bulldoodoo someone came up with to back up their opinion.

Whoever is happy will make others happy too. Anne Frank