How Iceland got teens to say no to drugs (2017)

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/

by amelius • 6 years ago

103 104 6 years ago

w-j-w• 6 years ago

I find this article interesting because I've heard others worry that the demise of unstructured time for children might be doing other types of damage.

lancebeet• 6 years ago

I think most would agree that prioritizing safety over freedom for children and adolescents is sometimes justified, but I find it sad that a curfew for individuals as old as 16 (and an even stricter one for adolescents under 13) can be celebrated the way it is in this article, especially when other countries have had a comparable reduction in adolescent alcohol consumption without implementing such a curfew. It makes me appreciate all the memories I have of staying out late in my own childhood and adolescence (without drinking or doing any drugs).

xvedejas• 6 years ago

Crime rates have been falling across the developed world for the last 30 years. I assume that's a decent proxy for teenage risk-taking behavior too. I wonder how much of this success is coincidental to broader social trends, rather than due to any particular policy or planned effort. I think we don't really know what's cause and effect if we don't try to measure these confounding factors.

Ericson23143• 6 years ago

Well the have a control in similar countries which didn't partake.

asgeir14• 6 years ago

They are allowed to be outside after curfew, they just need to have adult supervision to do so.

seppel• 6 years ago

"just"

Shared4047• 6 years ago

That's an awful big "just" you got there.

They may as well just be told you can't be outside during curfew.

throwaway_pdp094• 6 years ago

You make a good point. Also I don't like the righteous attitude of the article. That drugs can be safely used (not abused) seems omitted. 'tis about teens though so I wouldn't want them near the stuff, but aren't drugs part of growing up?

“Why not orchestrate a social movement around natural highs: around people getting high on their own brain chemistry—because it seems obvious to me that people want to change their consciousness—without the deleterious effects of drugs?”

If you want an answer to why not, because drugs are not intrinsically bad and can give you more than a life without drugs IMO. Or they can destroy you, I grant.

“We learned through the studies that we need to create circumstances in which kids can lead healthy lives, and they do not need to use substances, because life is fun, and they have plenty to do—and they are supported by parents who will spend time with them.”

'Because they have plenty to do' Hmm - I did spend part of my childhood on some crappy estates and there wasn't things to do, and no money to do it. And you didn't much want to go outside because it didn't feel safe. It wasn't. 'and they are supported by parents' - another presupposition that parents are good and nurturing. Not always. Perhaps in a rich and wise society you can mostly make this possible though.

I like their way of trying to take the pressure off kids so as to reduce the "rat park" effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park) and I think it's great. Kids don't develop properly in a pressure cooker. Overall, they're doing the right thing. Just don't overdo it.

frosted-flakes3• 6 years ago

FYI, throwaway accounts are highly discouraged on HN.

jacquesm2• 6 years ago

aren't drugs part of growing up?

No, they're not. They can be but they don't have to be.

jariel2• 6 years ago

Last time I drove through Detroit at night was a decade ago.

I distinctly remember it being past midnight, and there was an 8 year old kid, sitting on his bike, along, going nowhere on the corner of the gas station.

I also remember thinking WTF? If there is one, small seemingly innocuous thing that could 'tell you a whole lot' about a neighbourhood, it's definitely children wandering around at night. Forget curfew that kid should have been in bed.

ulzeraj• 6 years ago

I was in Dalvik back in early 2015. As soon as I’ve arrived at the town and parked the car I was approached by two kids in bicicleta aged no more than 15 and they’ve tried to sell me weed.

demosito666• 6 years ago

Could be that nobody just cares much about weed, aiming to reduce consumption of more harmful stuff like heroin, alcohol or tobacco.

Dumblydorr• 6 years ago

This policy may have had a secondary benefit: soccer and sports prowess. We saw in the last world cup that Iceland performed quite well in a tough first stage group against Argentina, Nigeria, and the eventual runners up Croatia.

Iceland was my team since they made it in and USA, with a population 600 times bigger, did not. This prowess in sport was then attributed to their massive buildout of soccer pitches in every area, coaches for ages 5-10 to develop fundamentals, etc.

There is a lot of potential in children, we can help them shine if we devote the resources! The USA has not done this, sadly most of the extracurricular funding is charity or is rich people giving their kids more chances to pad resumes for college apps.

alexpotato• 6 years ago

This prowess in sport was then attributed to their massive buildout of soccer pitches in every area, coaches for ages 5-10 to develop fundamentals

A key detail of the above is that most of the money spent was at the youth level and not, crucially, for highly paid coaches and administrators. In other words, you could be your full time job to be a youth soccer coach in Iceland whereas in many other countries it's a volunteer position e.g. Little League in the US.

I always think of this story when applying improvements to technology processes or infrastructure. Specifically, which solutions involve "one big thing changing" vs "getting everyone to do a few small things".

loeg• 6 years ago

USA won the last world cup.

ralfd• 6 years ago

No the real one. If I enter “last World Cup” into a private browser window google shows me the result of the tournament people really care about, which was won by France.

chmod775• 6 years ago

What? The US never won a world cup. Not in 90 years.

The highest position they ever reached was third place in 1930. And that world cup had only 13 participating teams.

Edit/Correction: Apparently there's a woman's world cup which the US won multiple times. Maybe they can arrange to send that team to the other one too, to increase their chances /s

fblp• 6 years ago

As a blanket of mental health issues arise during the pandemic. This is a reminder of how communities can enable lasting social change.

Ericson23143• 6 years ago

Harvey Milkman

Heh what a name

jacquesm2• 6 years ago

People don't get to choose their names.

Ericson23143• 6 years ago

It's just rare to see a name which has as a prefix another famous name.

spodek• 6 years ago

State funding was increased for organized sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, to give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group, and to feel good, rather than through using alcohol and drugs, and kids from low-income families received help to take part.

By contrast, how to create America today: reduce recess, remove athletics, reduce participation in arts, teach to the test, pave over green space, fund/segregate schools by property value, avoid project-based learning.

thom2• 6 years ago

Of course, other approaches are available. For example where I live in the UK, what we've done is defund youth services by about 80% over the last ten years due to austerity, leading to increases in gang membership and knife crime. We've then blamed this almost entirely on immigrants, which has in turn led to us voting to demolish whatever's left of our economy once the pandemic has had its way with us.

toomuchtodo• 6 years ago

You left out the part where pensioners continue to vote for and support these cannibalistic policies.

pydry• 6 years ago

A favor the government returned by sending covid-infected elderly back to care homes to prep the hospitals and causing an avalanche of care home deaths...

Not that it changed their views.

chroem-3• 6 years ago

As someone in the US, it's amusing to hear the phrase "knife crime" as a major source of violence.

ransom15382• 6 years ago

I remember watching a British police reality show and they found a bb gun in a persons home. The police, so unfamiliar with firearms, thought it was real and couldn't figure out how to "unload the rounds". Soon, they brought in an officer from their version of SWAT that quickly laughed it off.

candiodari• 6 years ago

Not that I don't agree that the US has a major gun problem, but knives are much more deadly than guns.

EL_Loco• 6 years ago

As someone in Brazil, it's equally amusing to me. And I know gun control is not a simple matter, and is not a magical solution, but man... this administration is going in the direction of not only less control, but less responsability (making it even harder than it already is to trace ammunition, for example)

dang3• 6 years ago

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

interfixus• 6 years ago

leading to increases in gang membership and knife crime

Much obliged if you would provide a citation for this claimed causation.

thom2• 6 years ago

I will try but you may not be convinced. Certainly there's a broad evidence base justifying primary prevention approaches, from the WHO [0] and perhaps at least the references in [1], and in the BMJ [2]. It feels slightly pedantic to have to then prove that taking these types of intervention _away_, or at least reducing them, would therefore lead to a rise in the rate of violence, but it'd be valid to demand that. Perhaps this report [3] from a more local perspective might help paint that picture better.

Many millions of pounds have been taken out of the council's budget. This has impacted youth, mental health, and alcohol/drug services. Changes at the national level have also effected the benefits landscape for many families in poverty. There is quite plainly less help and stability for communities most plagued by violence.

My wife works in and around child and adolescent mental health services and she and her colleagues clearly perceive the link, but I also hope it's evident from a systems thinking perspective: there is a pipeline from childhood poverty and trauma into more chaotic and violent behaviours. Anything that interrupts that pipeline is good, and taking that away is probably bad. Sure, it's an option to wait at the end, increase stop and search and just arrest everybody but that's not a particularly great public health outcome either, and perhaps there are lessons from America in diverting funds from everywhere else just to prop up police departments.

0: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/326377/9789...

1: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/inspire-seven-strate...

2: https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k1967

3: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/media/6787/download

anotheryou5• 6 years ago

if i remember the article correctly:

- no unstructured free time

- always in groups that are not just your friends

- always supervised

If your interests are aligned and you fit in with the average teens it might be great. If you need structure in your life to stay on track maybe too. But want to find yourself, becoming an independent adult and have nerdy interests it's probably hell.

I'm glad I built tree houses, skipped a night of sleep and cycled in to the sunrise, learned to program and do art (both as an auto-didactic. nothing I'm proud of, but certainly something that suits me so much better than fixed-learning-speed group courses. By definition those are too fast for half, to slow for the rest or to slow for everyone but the slowest). Of course I came across a joint, alcoholics and other broken people while doing so, but that's alright, too.

ipnon2• 6 years ago

You did not remember the article correctly.

edit: A summary of the changes:

Laws were changed. It became illegal to buy tobacco under the age of 18 and alcohol under the age of 20, and tobacco and alcohol advertising was banned. Links between parents and school were strengthened through parental organizations which by law had to be established in every school, along with school councils with parent representatives. Parents were encouraged to attend talks on the importance of spending a quantity of time with their children rather than occasional “quality time”, on talking to their kids about their lives, on knowing who their kids were friends with, and on keeping their children home in the evenings.
A law was also passed prohibiting children aged between 13 and 16 from being outside after 10 p.m. in winter and midnight in summer. It’s still in effect today.
Home and School, the national umbrella body for parental organizations, introduced agreements for parents to sign. The content varies depending on the age group, and individual organizations can decide what they want to include. For kids aged 13 and up, parents can pledge to follow all the recommendations, and also, for example, not to allow their kids to have unsupervised parties, not to buy alcohol for minors, and to keep an eye on the wellbeing of other children.
State funding was increased for organized sport, music, art, dance and other clubs, to give kids alternative ways to feel part of a group, and to feel good, rather than through using alcohol and drugs, and kids from low-income families received help to take part. In Reykjavik, for instance, where more than a third of the country’s population lives, a Leisure Card gives families 35,000 krona (£250) per year per child to pay for recreational activities.

anotheryou5• 6 years ago

Well I'd counter it with:

Young people aren’t hanging out in the park right now, Gudberg explains, because they’re in after-school classes in these facilities, or in clubs for music, dance, or art.
A law was also passed prohibiting children aged between 13 and 16 from being outside after 10 p.m. in winter and midnight in summer.
not to allow their kids to have unsupervised parties
Birgir trains five or six times a week; Jón, who is in his first year of a business degree at the University of Iceland, trains five times a week. They both started regular after-school training when they were six years old.

I think key is this sentence though:

Was there pressure to train when they’d rather have been doing something else? “No, we just had fun playing football,” says Birgir. Jón adds, “We tried it and got used to it, and so we kept on doing it.”

It's certainly up to the parents to make it a really free choice (and up to the state to provide it). Maybe you are right and it's really mainly a good thing :). I hope it is.

viburnum• 6 years ago

Yeah, I’ve read elsewhere that simply time spent with parents (playing board games or football or hiking or whatever) is a huge factor.

sli• 6 years ago

Referring to people as broken seems like a wholly unnecessary moral judgement against an awful lot people you've never met.

marcusverus• 6 years ago

OP's use of 'broken' is clearly describing a set of people he personally met. There is no broader implication as written.

anotheryou5• 6 years ago

I could have substituted it for "addicts". Somehow "broken" rang more true to me. The addiction is just the symptom, something underlying went (in my eyes) wrong.

Maybe "broken" sounds harsh, but I think they'd even agree.

And as marcusverus writes: yes, I got to know them, some where even my friends.

neutronman• 6 years ago

I was a broken person for part of my late teens and early twenties. Associated with the wrong people, got arrested once, then fell into alcoholism to self medicate my pain that stemmed from how much I hated myself.

Growing up, one of my parents subjected me to regular physical and emotional abuse while the other parent taught me to accept this bad behavior as normal.

I eventually entered into a codependent dysfunctional relationship that while toxic in so many ways also gave me the confidence I needed to end my substance abuse.

There are plenty of broken people. That doesn’t mean they can’t be repaired.

einpoklum• 6 years ago

“Why not orchestrate a social movement around natural highs: around people getting high on their own brain chemistry etc.?"

1. Governments, especially in the US, dislike spending large amounts on the well-being of the masses, especially when there's little immediate political benefit. In particular, they are often lobbied heavily to avoid doing so.

2. In states like the US, there is some collusion between the government (especially parts of the intelligence services and the military) and drug growers, traffickers, and marketers - especially in foreign countries like Columbia and Afghanistan but probably also domestically.

Shared4047• 6 years ago

2. In states like the US, there is some collusion between the government (especially parts of the intelligence services and the military) and drug growers, traffickers, and marketers - especially in foreign countries like Columbia and Afghanistan but _probably also domestically_. (Emphasis mine)

But what about the completely legit war on drugs? I thought the government was supposed to be protecting us from all the scary people bringing drugs into our peaceful country.

edwardwatson• 6 years ago

Iceland is small with no land borders, making it less profitable and more difficult to sell drugs there. Similarly, alcohol is incredibly highly taxed there, perhaps more than any other country outside Scandinavia. Very different conditions to e.g. the UK so it's not clear any of these initiatives would be portable to other societies.

pmoriarty• 6 years ago

It's currently a minority position, but there is an argument to be made that constructive use of psychedelics by children with their parents can be beneficial, for various reasons (such as forging a stronger bond between parent and child, and fostering empathy by using empathogens like MDMA, to revealing the world of the sacred to the child through a mystical experience, and so on).

Search around the web for "psychedelic parenting" to find advocates of this approach.

I expect that as the so-called Psychedelic Renaissance blossoms, and psychedelics become more widely accepted in mainstream society, this minority position will become less of a minority position.

It is not unimaginable that some day there may once again be society-wide initiation ceremonies and rites of passage for children involving psychedelics used as sacraments, maybe not unlike what Aldous Huxley envisioned in his book Island, and what traditional societies have done in ages past and some continue to do even now.

How Iceland got teens to say no to drugs (2017)

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