What if illegal drugs were legalized?

The prohibition of drugs by governments is continually debated. Those in favour of prohibition believe that it reduces drug use and trafficking, discourages crime, and therefore improves productivity and health outcomes. In contrast, critics claim that the effect of prohibition on trafficking and use is very small, while crime is increased and many problems, such as health issues and quality control, cannot be properly addressed. An Australian social change researcher calls prohibition “a cure that makes the disease worse” and “corrupts society” (Jiggens, 2005).

One important issue in the debate is, quite simply, money. Drug prohibition means enormous enforcement costs while the production and sale of drugs cannot be taxed. Of course, the money issue alone cannot predict an overall favourable outcome of drug legalization, but it must be relevant considering what could be achieved if a good part of the extra revenue was invested in health promotion and harm reduction. For example, there would be enough money for the development of more effective and far-reaching prevention campaigns, as well as harm reduction programs such as safe, supervised injection and “coming-down” rooms and required staff. These initiatives would undoubtedly reduce harm and violence in the community. In addition, more money could be spent on research, development and clinical trials of new substitution and other harm-minimizing drugs.

Miron (2008) estimates from 2006 data that with a regime legalizing drugs while taxing and regulating them similarly to alcohol and tobacco, the U.S. government could save more than US$44 billion in enforcement expenditure while generating additional tax revenue of more than US$32 billion, the bulk of which would come from cocaine and heroin. Of course, Australian numbers are substantially lower (AU$600-700 million for enforcement in 1998, Jiggens, 2005), but together with the added tax revenue, and hopefully a reduced burden on health care costs in the future, the prospect of drug legalization is a promising and appealing one.

It will be a long way and subject of approval from the UN, who are heavily influenced by the U.S. government, before the world will start moving towards drug legalization. However, it is encouraging to see that researchers everywhere start to voice their concerns (and the cold facts) about the widespread ineffectiveness and detrimental effects of drug prohibition.

References

Jiggens, J. (2005). The cost of drug prohibition in Australia. Paper presented to the Social Change in the 21^st Century Conference, Centre for Social Change Research, Queensland University of Technology.

Miron, J.A. (2008). The budgetary implications of drug prohibition. Harvard University, Department of Economics. Report funded by the U.S. Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.

Feeling guilty about eating too much chocolate? – Part 2

After my first post about this topic, I have been asked to explain how I changed my own excessive chocolate-eating behaviour. So, here are some important points that helped me do it:

The hardest thing about behaviour change is self-control, which is especially important when it is impossible or impracticable to have someone else do the monitoring and controlling for you. Of course, a behaviour such as eating chocolate leaves a lot of room for easy cheating, and it is imperative to acquire the right attitude before you can even start to attempt a change. This means that you need to seriously want the change, and for all the right reasons. If it helps, you can write down all the things that will be better once you eat less chocolate.

Then you have to set a reasonable goal. Trying to cut out chocolate altogether would likely drive you insane, so try to find what would be a sufficient amount to satisfy you somewhat, and then reduce by an amount that is acceptable to you. You can always reduce further later on.

Instrumental conditioning is often used to change an undesirable beaviour. Two forms of instrumental conditioning are positive reinforcement where good behaviour is rewarded, and punishment where bad behaviour is punished. These can be used separately or in combination, but punishment alone seems to have a less lasting effect (as most parents would probably agree). This will be even more true if you have to punish yourself, while it is easy to reward yourself. In my case, a combination of both did the trick.

First, decide on something you would enjoy very much but don’t normally indulge in (of course, it has to be something that has nothing to do with food). For me, the prospect of a head-to-toe massage was a great incentive. Your chosen reward can be something small that you give yourself fairly often, something a bit bigger that you can treat yourself with a few times, or something really major that you receive once you have successfully changed your behaviour. Choose the time interval that suits your personality best, and make an exact plan of when you will receive what.

Of course, there may be the occasional relapse that could wreck your confidence in your ability to stick to the new regime (it can be difficult and sad sometimes to think that this is it, from now on and forever after.) That’s when the punishment comes in which is a good way to help avoid such relapses. However, it only works if you hand it to yourself immediately. You can start with a mild punisher and see how you go. It is best to find something that you hate doing but that needs to be done anyway (in my case, it was cleaning, definitely cleaning…) Here, of course, you must be honest with yourself and really make yourself do the chore whenever you catch yourself eating more than you are supposed to.

I expected at first that I would need a stronger punisher, but was then surprised at how well this one worked. Ten minutes of cleaning whenever I went overboard was enough to put me off very soon. Of course, I could always eat the chocolate and not do the cleaning, but that really made me feel like a loser and I did not want to feel like that. I also noticed that the timing was important because I tended to eat too much chocolate in the evenings after settling comfortably in front of the TV or with a good book, and this was the time when I felt like cleaning the very least. So keep the timing in mind when you decide on your little punisher.

After a while you will notice that it makes you feel good when you manage to stick to your plan and to receive your rewards for it. Nice things are so much more enjoyable when you feel that you truly deserve them! Hopefully, you will then also start to feel the other benefits of reduced chocolate consumption, such as improved health and general well-being, and even some more money in your pocket for other things. You’ll find that it is all worth the trouble in the end!

Now, there is only one more thing to do: keeping the good work up. Chances are that once you have successfully reduced the amount of chocolate you eat, you will never want to go back to the old ways and will ask yourself how you could ever stomach such large quantities. However, don’t fret if you want to pig out sometimes, as long as those occasions remain few and far between. I think my average consumption has slightly increased again since I finished my program, but I am happy and comfortable with it at this stage. The following rule can also be applied to weight control and lots of other things and behaviours we would like to adjust: it is better to do it slowly and then find a good balance you can live with.

Go ahead, give it a try, you may find it easier than you think

Best of luck to everyone out there who might get a little motivated by this.

Yvonne

At war with the spelling mistake…

I have been blessed with a gift that sometimes turns into a curse! I can spot spelling mistakes and typing errors from a mile away. In fact, it’s more like they spot me. They jump out at me, poke me in the eye, or stab me in the back. They give me a fright whenever they please.

Think of the following hypothetical scenario:

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My family and I are seated around an inviting looking table at a stylish restaurant, a beautifully bound menu politely offered by a handsome waiter. Looking forward to picking out a delicacy that tickles my fancy on this particular occasion, I skim through the mouth-watering choices; mind, body and soul stimulated by the anticipation of the sensual tastebud-pampering I am about to receive. The moment is so perfect it is almost orgasmic, until the unthinkable brings me crashing down…

**COCK-AU-VIN**, the menu screams out at me with blinding clarity. My incredulous stare burns a hole through the page. I quite literally faint for a split second, then force myself back into upright position just before my head hits the table. I cannot believe this is happening yet again. Hardly able to afford such luxury, I have chosen an upmarket restaurant today to avoid exactly this kind of illiterate attack. But apparently there is no such thing as a safe place. While most people would burst out laughing, for me another experience of culinary bliss is ruined before it even begins. I get up, apologize, and leave. The others exchange knowing glances and gracefully accept my need to escape. They have learned to enjoy their meals just as much without the eccentric one.

I do not mention the reason for my premature departure to the waiter or the owner of the restaurant. Too many times I have pointed out similarly unfortunate blunders, only to find them left in their embarrassing original state later on. For all I care, they can embarrass themselves for as long as they like, and they may well lose a few patrons because of it. Surely, I am not the only one! Or am I?

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You have probably guessed that this story is entirely fictional and slightly exaggerated in order to enhance your reading pleasure :-} Fortunately, I am not fanatic enough about other people’s mistakes to become emotionally distressed over them.

However, I do find the sheer amount of spelling and typing errors that I encounter on a daily basis rather worrying, especially because the vast majority of them are accidental typos that could easily be avoided. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! Rarely do I come across a website or a printed text that does not contain at least some minor assault on my acute sense of grammatical correctness. Mind you, flawless writing does exist and when I see it, I appreciate it immensely.

Of course, some spelling mistakes are extraordinarily funny. For example, in the German language you can turn a very difficult woman into a nymphomaniac simply by swapping two letters around. The restaurant menu is just one example providing endless opportunity for silly blunders, and luckily, the resulting damage is usually small, because bad spelling is not automatically associated with bad cooking. However, in different contexts the damage potential of an error in the wrong place at the wrong time can be huge. For example, think of what can happen when a ‘boardroom’ becomes a ‘bored room’, a ‘manager’ turns into a ‘manger’, or a decimal point accidentally moves a place or two…

Too many creators of written text do not put enough effort into keeping their material free of errors, although there are plenty of consumers out there who not only notice but remember, too. It certainly has a negative effect on first impressions, something that is normally a major concern and avoided at all costs. So why let it happen? Underestimating the consumer NEVER pays. Written material is often the first and only quality measure available to a potential customer. There is no doubt in my mind that the simple spelling error, which can be so easily avoided, is costing enormous amounts of business and money around the world every day.

Therefore, if you are not already applying rigorous quality control, such as proofreading and editing, to your website or print materials, please consider to do so in the future. I can do it for you in English and in German language. Have a look at my ‘Services’ page for affordable, negotiable and flexible rates. If not convinced, there are plenty of other proofreading and editing services available, (e.g. PSI Tutor, see blog roll). Don’t put it off any longer.

Yvonne (email: yvonne.drazic@bigpond.com or yvonne.drazic@gmail.com) or leave a comment here.

Scary stuff: Young girls and body image

Hello, dear readers!

The purpose of this post is to raise awareness of how early in life a child’s (especially girl’s) body image starts to be influenced by outside factors such as toys and the media. A while ago, I wrote an article critique as part of my studies, and it was a real eye-opener for myself and the class I presented it to. The research study in question was conducted with very young girls because most previous research of body image development focussed on children and adolescents older than eight. Please note that the study used participants from a mostly white American middle-class population, and that the results may therefore not apply equally to girls with different socio-cultural backgrounds. The title of the article was

“Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin? The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year-Old Girls” (Dittmar, Halliwell & Ive, 2006).

In their study, the researchers compared the reported body image and body shape dissatisfaction of 162 girls from three age groups (grade 1, 2 and 3), after showing them one of three versions of a specially made-up picture book. All three versions of the book contained the same storyline, but one version featured Barbie dolls, one version featured Emme dolls, and the third version was neutral without visible people in it. Apart from having a more average body shape, Emme dolls look quite similar to Barbie dolls who’s frame is so thin it would be quite impossible to achieve for any normal woman.

I will not go into too much detail about every statistically obtained result here, but the bottom line was clear: even the youngest girls in the Barbie group reported a more negative body image and more body shape dissatisfaction than those in the Emme and neutral groups. The direct effect was largest in the grade 2 girls and seemed to diminish in the grade 3 girls, but it definitely was significant already in the grade 1 girls who were between 5 1/2 and 6 1/2 years old.

Based on their findings, the researchers suggest that internalization of the thin-ideal may start earlier than previously thought. I might add that general daily exposure to the media, which is virtually unavoidable these days, will have an even greater effect than playing with the wrong dolls. In any case, the study discribed above was only preliminary, and careful longitudinal research is needed to shed more light on the dangers of early exposure to distorted or unrealistic body ideals. Plus, toy designers and advertisers should stop, forget about the money for a moment, and take a long hard look at research of this kind.

Until then, I urge all mothers of young girls out there to make an extra effort to teach their daughters about human anatomy and tell them that you have no idea how the Barbie creators could have gotten it so terribly wrong. It might be worth mentioning that if a girl or a woman looked like Barbie, she would be seriously ill. At this point in time, it is unrealistic to try and suggest that people stop buying Barbie dolls, because the darn things have been around for more than half a century and, according to Rogers (1999), only one percent of US girls do not own one. However, I strongly believe that the right guidance from a trusted role model will help avoid negative outcomes in most cases.

Please leave comments if you have anything to add or don’t agree!

References

Dittmar, H., Halliwell, E., & Ive, S. (2006). Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5- to 8-year-old girls. Developmental Psychology, 42/2, 283-292.

Rogers, A. (1999). Barbie Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Feeling guilty about eating too much chocolate? – Part 1

Have you been called a chocolate addict, because you just can’t stop indulging in the sweet sensation? You’re not alone, and chances are that you feel guilty about it to some degree at least some of the time. People who eat excessive amounts of a not-so-healthy food often feel guilty about various things such as neglecting their health, not being able to control the urge, setting their children a bad example, and sometimes also about putting additional strain on the budget. I used to be one of those people, and my own need to reduce excessive chocolate consumption prompted me to research the topic. In the process I found that there are many possible reasons for the behaviour, none of which we should have to feel guilty about.

First of all, the abundance of food in the developed world has led to the neglect of natural cues for when, what and how much we eat, and therefore, food intake has lost its original purpose of simply maintaining the body’s homeostasis (Le Magnen, 1985). This means, we eat for pleasure rather than for need. However, some natural preferences (salt, sugar, fat) seem to be firmly anchored in the genetic makeup of most mammals (and humans are mammals), as they represents an essential energy source (Logue, 1991). This innate hunger for sweetness, combined with the psycho-pharmacologically active ingredients of cocoa (caffeine and theobromine) which positively affect mood and performance, strongly predisposes chocolate to be addictive, or at least extremely desirable (Smit and Blackburn, 2004).

Apart from these factors, sensory pleasure, a person’s family and cultural background, as well as previous experience with a food are all involved in our food choices, suggesting that a large part of it is learned or conditioned (Beck, 2000).

The conditioning of human eating behaviour starts early in life. For example, studies have shown that the mother’s diet during pregnancy influences her offspring’s food preferences (Beck, 2000). In addition, when a neutral stimulus is paired with an already liked (or disliked) affective stimulus, evaluative conditioning occurs (De Houwer et al., 2001). Therefore, children learn to love chocolate and other sweet foods through association with happy events such as Easter, birthdays and Christmas, usually during their very first year. According to research, once a liking for a certain food has been conditioned in this way, it usually remains for life.

Instrumental conditioning, which is the learning of positive or negative consequences of specific behaviours, also takes place from an early age. For example, a toddler is offered chocolate as a reward for good behaviour, or the treat is withheld as punishment for bad behaviour (Martin & Pear, 1999).

In many cases, excessive chocolate eating is compensating behaviour for people who had to give up something else (e.g. alcohol, smoking), or people who feel emotionally neglected (e.g. after a relationship breakdown). The excessive behaviour is slowly conditioned by association with an increasing number of everyday events such as coming home from work, finishing a meal, watching TV, and eventually even with opening the fridge. According to Burnham and Phelan (2000), there exists a “do-it-again center” in the hypothalamus of the brain, which makes rats (and humans) want to repeat behaviours with pleasurable consequences over and over again. For those who are interested how this could offer a possible explanation for more serious addiction, please read about Opponent Process Theory (e.g. Solomon & Corbit, 1973).

The negative impact of excessive chocolate consumption on a person’s life is usually small and outweighed by the reward of intense pleasure. However, if the habit causes negative feelings and starts affecting everyday life, it can potentially lead to depression or eating disorders. As Beck (2000) points out, eating disorders such as obesity, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia are extremely difficult to treat once they have fully developed. Therefore, in order to avoid such serious consequences later on, it is vital to recognize the early signs while there is still a good chance to reverse the effects with relatively little effort.

There are several methods for behaviour change. Currently, one of the most successful of these is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), which is used by many psychotherapists (there is lots of information about CBT available on the internet). I am happy to say that I have successfully reduced the amount of chocolate that I eat to a level that allows me to fully enjoy the pleasure of it, but without the guilt. If you want to know how I did it, leave a comment and I’ll tell you in the next post.

References

Beck, R.C. (2000). Motivation (4^th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

De Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin 2001, 127/6, 853-869.

Le Magnen, J. (1985). Hunger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Logue, A.W. (1991). The psychology of eating and drinking: An introduction (2^nd ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Martin, G., & Pear, J. (1999). Behaviour modification: What is it and how to do it (6^th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Smit, H.J. & Blackburn, R.J. (2005). Reinforcing effects of caffeine and theobromine as found in chocolate. Psychopharmacology, 181, 101-106.

Solomon, R.L. & Corbit J.D. (1973). An opponent-process theory of motivation: II. Cigarette addiction. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 81/2, 158-172.

Hello!

I am new to blogging, but will attempt to learn all there is to know about it as quickly as possible. So please bear with me if this seems very basic at first, it will get big and interesting in the near future.

I intend to include various topics that will help people to understand each other better, to become more tolerant towards other people’s behavior, and to realize that free will is not always what it seems.

More soon…

Thanks to wordpress for having me :-}

Yvonne