chiknsmack

Jeez, you've dug deep to necro this thread meomy.

I disagree that it will increase harm, on a net basis. Even if the black market remains, it will shrink when it has competition (who would buy product of questionable quality from scummy gang members when you can by high-quality stuff from a specialist retailer?). Smoking cannabis daily in your teens leads to an increased risk of suicide. That's why no-one in their right mind is pushing for kids to be allowed access to cannabis. Teens currently have widespread access via the black market, so if we shrink the black market by adding a white market which provides most/all of the supply for legal adults, we reduce teenage access to cannabis. Plus having it legalised means we can have straightforward conversations with the youth and educate them on the risks involved when combining it with an undeveloped brain. Also, there's a proven link between cbd and reductions in anxiety and depression (and therefore suicide). Seem like a big reduction in harm is available there. Accident rates will probably increase (assuming people don't stop drinking and replace their drinking with cannabis, in which case accident rates would stay around the same or maybe even reduce, as being high on cannabis makes you less likely to go out and get up to shenanigans compared to being drunk). In that respect, you're probably right. But this will be far outweighed by all of the benefits I mentioned in my first post (medical use, tax revenue). This is why just asking yourself just one question doesn't work. If I based my opinion purely on freedom and liberty, I'd say we should legalise Heroin/Cocaine/P. I could even point to Portugal as an example where widespread decriminalisation lead to reductions in both the use and the harms caused by these drugs. But that's not my stance. It's a balancing act. You need to balance personal freedom against the net benefit/harm to society. I believe there needs to be a good reason to take freedoms away from people. In my view, the harms from cannabis legalisation are outweighed by the benefits; it would be better for New Zealand as a whole if cannabis was legal. So even if I wasn't such a hardcore "You live your life, I'll live mine" person, I'd be pro-legalisation. And this is from someone who has never used illegal drugs and never even had more than four standard drinks in a year.

Nukkledragga is implying anyone who supports policies that force people who would like to responsibly use safer-than-alcohol marijuana to instead use deadly synthetics. Also, anyone who supports gangs having a monopoly on the supply of marijuana. Legalising cannabis takes away funding from gangs and takes away customers they can push towards harder stuff like P. Everything can possibly cause harm. Your one question is a bit simplistic; there are two questions I think you need to ask before voting. 1.) Will legalising cannabis increase or reduce the harm being done to society (funding gangs, not being able to educate people on safe use, not being able to use cbd-based medicines to tackle anxiety/depression/nausea/pain, not having the government be able to tax the * out of it so they can reduce income tax in return) under the current laws? 2.) Do I want a government that treats me like an adult and lets me race dogs/smoke weed/bet on sport/marry a dude/drink a beer if that's what I want to do, or a government that bans things it doesn't like and will merrily stomp on my freedoms if it/a big enough mob decides the things I want to do are "bad" things? As racing participants, we have a passion for an activity which is slowly losing its social acceptability. Out of everyone in the country, we should be the most ardent "live and let live" group there is. Yes, probably. Trainers will have to decide if they want to ban all of their staff from consuming cannabis at all, or if they're willing to make judgment calls and roll the dice. It'll mean that if you want to work in the industry you'll probably have to not partake. But at least everyone will have the choice of how they want to live their life.

Heroic Valour got close to earning his purchase price back, and is now at stud in Australia. Queen of Diamonds would be worth heaps more now than what she sold for.

How much would they have taken on that market at this point? It's not super attractive to tie your money up for nine months in a 125% market with a $1.20 favourite, so would they have taken even 1k on it in total so far, never mind 10k? If I was running that book and someone wanted 10k on, I wouldn't even give them $300. I'd probably suspend the market straight away until I made sure the Richards team hadn't had a bunch of cobalt positives, or Jamie had keeled over and died, or something silly like that. I suppose someone could theoretically think Baker/Forsman were more than a 17% chance of winning the premiership and so value at $6, but unless that "someone" bets millions per year a 10k bet would be strange in a market with next-to-no interest from anyone. I'm usually less of a pussy than the bookies too.

The other thing is that they've changed the order of the columns of odds they display on the left hand side of the screen. It used to be FFWIN, Tote Win, Tote Place. Now it's Tote win, FFWIN, FFPLC. It threw me off the other day too.

Corey Brown is reasonably eloquent, but he's not much of a genius. Last week he said he doesn't bother walking the track before the meeting because you can just follow one of the jockeys who has. On Thursday he had no idea how quick they'd gone early in the first and how strong the wind was (they came home in 12.3 and 12.9) and what that meant for the shape of the race. Then the juveniles go around in Race 2 and he tells us all that the jocks will want to put their inexperienced mounts on one of the rails down the straight track to help guide them. Which makes sense, except the actual jockeys who were riding on the day were happy to stay up the middle. Before the third he said that the favourites in the next had tough barriers and that you wouldn't want to be covering ground... followed by telling us all after the race that he spoke to a couple of the jocks and they said that the wind was hitting the horses on the fence so 3w was a great place to be. Trackside is set up as a betting medium, so they want polished presenters who can talk idiots into having a bet on the next race, and then seamlessly encourage them to back something in the next, then the one after that. Occasionally you'll get some info you wouldn't have otherwise gotten (on domestic racing anyway; there's never anything of value shared about the Australian races) but Trackside isn't set up for knowledgeable, eloquent presenters to educate the viewers or help out the punters. If they did want to turn the channel into a quality viewing experience showcasing the sport though, hopefully they could do better than Corey Brown.

I'm after footage of all the pre- and post-race stuff from the VRC Oaks today. If someone has this recorded off Trackside we can probably find a way for me to get a copy, which I'd really appreciate. Failing that, if anyone has any ideas of where I could find it online (I know racing.com have replays of the race and of some of the post-race interviews), please let me know. Thanks.

Add a horse to your betslip, click the orange Freebet icon that comes up, then select the freebet you want to use from the dropdown list.

Mustajeer Raymond Tusk Twilight Payment

Well done, and thanks for sharing.

Midnight Runner leads, Marzemino osl? Or does Marzemino hold the rail? I think whichever one leads wins, though Marzemino is the better horse and could win sitting osl. Marzemino already $3.70 into $3.20.

Hōiho Nāti. Those macrons seem quite important; the difference between "Play/Gamble Horses of New Zealand" and "Play Strangle Yellow-Eyed Penguin of New Zealand". Though I don't know why they haven't gone with the transliteration reihi hōiho (race horse). Maybe the same reason we've gone away from the old transliteral days of the week from when I was a kid (Mane, Tūrei, Wenerei etc.) to the "Rā" days (Rāhina, Rātū, Rāapa etc).

And now withdrawn from the sale, having been sold privately. “There are a few stars among them too. We’ve had a Deep Field colt win two trials and we’ve sold him, though the money hasn’t yet come through so he could go through the ring if it doesn’t arrive. But overall they’re a really nice group of horses.” https://www.racecafe.co.nz/karaka-million-path-begins-for-neon-moon/