REFERENDUM BLUES
In 2024 Slovenia had a referendum on cannabis and assisted dying.
No, they don't have anything to do with each other. So the opponents of
both tried to make it look like they did. Slovene, remember, doesn't have
a word for "conflation". [5990]
Reputedly a melancholy country, the 41% of eligible citizens (about 93-95%
of the adult population) were more in favour of the suiciding (54.85%)
than the giggling (51.55%).
66.71% seemed to think more expensive chemical cannabis on prescription
would be ok. But this likely included ~100% of the pro-recreational voters
because why wouldn't it? See AI analysis below.
Slovenia's doctors were mostly aghast, in various conservative ways. With
the help of referendums, Slovenia had gained independence, become a member
of the European Union and joined NATO, says health institute boss Milan
Krek, writing on plusportal.si:
"According to Vesna Marinko from the Ministry of Health, we import over 20
kilograms of CBD and THC annually. Moreover, given that the use of
cannabis for medical purposes has been permitted for several years, this
question is completely inappropriate and incorrectly posed, as it asks
about permission for something that has been permitted for many years."
Disingenuously, he states that:
"The use of medical cannabis for treatment is really not new in Slovenia.
Thus, a student at the Faculty of Health from Jesenice found in his thesis
in 2016 that as many as 80% of respondents support the use of cannabis for
medical purposes."
Survivor bias, probably. In a seemingly emollient, priestly style, he
continues:
"In September 2023, a cannabis conference was held in Bled, where the
State Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office, Dr. Metka Paragi, herself
stated that 80% of the population of Slovenia already supports the use of
cannabis for medical purposes. So, with such great support for the use of
medical cannabis, why do we need a referendum to determine what we have
known for a long time? Namely, that people support the medical use of
cannabis and that some even prescribe it to patients who use it as
medicine."
https://www.plusportal.si/2024/03/29/referendum-o-regulaciji-medicinske-konoplje-kot-svobodnjaska-manipulacija/
[4929]
"Some even prescribe it," hahaha. Unfortunately the doctor I visited had
no idea such a thing was possible, and evidently thought it had no medical
uses or benefits to offer.
And later, after the Government permitted prescriptions for any condition,
the Defendant gave his reasons why he wanted some [5638]. But answer came there none.
It might reasonably be asked, is all use of cannabis medical? Do the
462,292 citizens who responded positively to the referendum question on
medical use really anticipate having to visit the doctor for a
prescription? In the opinion of Delo, they are all mad:
"The Expert Council for Psychiatry provides a coordinated opinion on the
medical use of cannabis. The prescription of cannabinoid-based medicines
or cannabis is completely adequately resolved in Slovenia and doctors can
already prescribe these medicines for established and properly confirmed
indications. They acknowledge that it is possible that doctors are still
relatively poorly educated about the appropriate use of these medicines.
In 2021, 1,225 prescriptions for the aforementioned medicines were
prescribed."
https://www.delo.si/novice/slovenija/vlada-bo-imela-kar-nekaj-dela
[4930]
The problem here is that Dr Krek does not see any disjunction between the
1,225 prescriptions and the 462,292 medical cannabis enthusiasts, or the
354,845 who supported recreational use.
This in a country of 2.12 million people, about a quarter of whom seem to
be bureaucrats. And where it took this Defendant 17 years to acquire a
doctor - for bureaucratic reasons to do with not-Slovenian-enoughness [5977].
When the great day arrived, she abruptly asked in the middle of a
discussion about HbA1c if I go to church. This, apparently, was the most
important diagnostic criterion.
Did I want some pills? No, just cannabis, I replied. Cannabis is bad for
you, she claimed with a shocked look. Such a thing was not possible.
Unaware that it had theoretically been available on prescription for five
years at that point, in a dreary monochemical format, the doc made some
dates for my tests, and resumed her catholic recruitment drive, sifting
through a throng of alcoholic cirrhosis patients waiting to die.
The Defendant had had a stroke, after a Slovenian language lesson from a
jealous drunk coked-up sporty boy from the chicken factory, ten years
earlier. Taking the form of a whack round the head.
Now, thanks to Brexit, medicine (but not Slovene lessons) had become
available. An MRI on a CD duly arrived in the post, but without any offer
of an interpretation. Neurology, but not endocannabinoidology, remained a
do-it-yourself.
Indeed, looking at the other people in the Ptuj hospital, younger but
strangely older looking, the Defendant did feel an almost catholic shame
for using its resources.
Anecdotally, it became increasingly clear those 17 years had been
relatively safe, medically speaking. But as for personal experience, only
50% his ultrasounds disappeared into a bureaucratic void, and only 50%
turned out to be a different ultrasound to the one he thought he was going
for, and humiliatingly so, in the catholic tradition.
Let us assume generously but rather unrealistically that Dr Krek's 1,225
prescriptions of 2021 represented 1,225 different patients. It was
probably fewer.
Let us further assume they all voted in the referendum for their treatment
which, as Dr Krek admits, would be rather pointless.
Unless they were trying, perhaps, to avoid taking time off to make an
appointment, having to queue up whilst catching other people's germs, and
having to negotiate their way past the doctor's resistance, suggested
alternative drugs, moral dimension, and catholic stare.
We shall subtract this 1,225 from the pro-medical cannabis voters in the
"inappropriate" referendum.
Do the remaining 461,067 supporters of "medical" cannabis include the
354,845 who voted for "recreational" cannabis, and does this latter group
(77%) wish to cut Dr Krek and his colleagues out of the supply chain?
The answer to both questions is very probably yes. Would the 77% change
their minds if the referendum result had been otherwise? Hardly likely.
Perhaps what they are really trying to envisage is not really a surgery at
all but a shop.
While some may seek comfort in an authoritarian seal of approval - perhaps
to avoid eternal damnation - 354,845 out of 461,067 do not.
Dr Krek has no words for this 77%, who may not have found a doctor yet,
even less so a cannabis-friendly one. Who may not be seeking a sermon, or
to replace one god with another. And who may be seeking salvation in this
life, not an empirically unconfirmed afterlife to come.
These type of people - the 77% of the 66.71% - do not fit Dr Krek's world
view, and so he simply does not mention them at all. He belongs to the
other 23%. (In another word salad, he helpfully points out that 35% - the
pro-all-purposes legalization figure cooked up by his National Institute
for Public Health in a far smaller 2021 poll - "is far too little for a
referendum victory").
The real questions which should have been asked in such an exercise of
democratic opinion are opportunities missed. Do the winners want
guarantees of quality, purity, and protection from contamination and
paying seven times as much? Probably, yes.
Do they want a natural product that smells nice, works better, and costs
less, rather than a frankencannabinoid in a test tube? The public has
voted yes.
Will a medical model guarantee this? Unfortunately, definitely not. The
medics can offer only a reductionist industrial pharmaceutical titer, with
no entourage effects.
Will these johnny-come-lately experts want you to stick it up your bum?
Yes of course. This plan always attracts a disproportionate amount of
attention in catholic medical circles. Is this how you plan to socialize
with acquaintances? Probably not.
https://magazin-konopi.cz/bozidar-radisic-od-cipku-do-vesmiru/?unapproved=75483&moderation-hash=72c62ddc14c948c7f6b72df1d555466c
[4931]
How do we know their version will be a half-useless anal pharma nightmare?
Because it always is. Prohibition has already created synthetic
cannabinoids far more dangerous than anything you can grow yourself.
But the most important question missed in the inappropriate referendum
was: are your health choices a voting matter? Do you seek a mass opinion
when you want to drink coffee or alcohol, on where you obtain health
supplements, or engage in other health-related behaviours?
Is it necessary when you cut your finger or get a blocked nose, to find
out what most people in the street think you should do, before you act?
The answer is probably no.
Even if it was thought appropriate to poll your city before you had a
beer, would all the answers be right? There would inevitably be
differences of opinion. Can all the opinions be equally correct? How could
they be? The answer is no.
Is cannabis any more a topic on which abstainers ought to have a say in
your decision, than whether to have an objectively 114 times more
dangerous drink? At least 51.55% do not think so. Would it matter if only
1% thought so? Not to the 1%.
Thus Dr Krek is right about the non-necessity for the referendum, but for
the wrong reasons. The attempt at professional enclosure will fail,
because it already has.
On 2 December 2020 the UNODC became the last people in the world to find
out cannabis has medical uses and is not heroin. So now we have to endure
the excruciating agony of watching Slovenia's new experts charging each
other to sit in conference centres, for seminars to find out what everyone
else has known all along.
"Božidar Radišič from the Pest association, which also organizes training
courses on the importance and use of cannabis, says that doctors do not
usually attend them. Nurses predominate. That is why he sees the results
of the referendum as a great success, even if only about half of the
voters are in favor of personal use of cannabis. 'People clearly do not
like this drug policy. Problems are not solved by the same people who
created the problems. If only half of the voters are in favor of increased
use of cannabis, this will be a big blow to the counter-propaganda that
was financed by the Ministry of Health and doctors,' Radišič believes."
[4930]
And what of the law? More precisely, what are the lawyers going to charge
for?
The referendum has answered a question that until 8 April 2017 would have
been unthinkable. The Defendant's case spans a period when cannabis could
"not be used in medicine", and when it could; when it was not used
medically, but was; and afterwards...when it still was - continuing a
12,000 year tradition during which it can now safely be concluded preceded
a modern-day dark age, about a century in length, from which the battered
victims of the false god of prohibition are now emerging, with the experts
bringing up the rear...
The truth will out, as they say. A truth, in truth, which never went away.
Except for officially, legally, economically, and therefore somehow
"medically", feeling healthy and feeling ok have never been in any kind of
conflict at all.
Whatever proportion of the cost of the referendum is attributable to the
cannabis issue was money wasted. Its only purpose was to deflect blame for
the error away from officialdom to the people it supposedly represents.
It was a waste, not only because there are not enough doctors' offices to
cope with the demand.
Not only because the doctors and officialdom are too scared of the
finger-pointing of their colleagues to be the first to get up on the
dancefloor.
It was not even a waste because of the economic downside, to sectional
interests, of drugs that are not addictive - but actually work - rather
than merely creating side effects requiring other drugs they can get paid
to prescribe.
And this is true of psychedelics too - as the evidence will show, even
more true. The difference here being that Slovenia's law is still
pretending they have no "medical" use.
The referendum was not a waste because of any of these things. But because
the public has no reason to care what these busybodies thought they were
supposed to think.
In a similar vein, the Defendant does not offer advice to equestrians on
horse-riding, to Slovenia's drunk drivers on their cars, to Dr Krek on
political machinations, to sheepdogs on sheepdogging, or to gamblers on
their bets.
AI weighs in on the question of overlap in the two results...
In Slovenia, if 462,292 and 66.71% of voters voted for medical cannabis
and 354,845 and 51.57% of voters voted for recreational cannabis, what is
the probable proportion of the latter that also voted for the former? Or
is that information actually publicly available? 2,126,324 residents on 1
July 2024 and the turnout was approximately 41% of 1,692,371 registered
voters.
The information on the exact overlap between voters who supported
recreational cannabis and those who supported medical cannabis is not
publicly available, as official referendum results only provide aggregate
totals per question, without cross-tabulations or individual-level data
(due to ballot secrecy).
However, based on the numbers provided and the nature of the issues, the
probable proportion is close to 100%. It is logically implausible that a
voter would support recreational use (a more permissive policy) while
opposing medical use (a narrower, health-focused policy). This implies
nearly all of the 354,845 recreational supporters also supported medical
cannabis. For a closed-ended math question like estimating overlap bounds
under assumptions, here's the structured reasoning:
Let T = total valid votes ≈ 693,872 (from 41% turnout of 1,692,371
registered voters).
Let M_yes = 462,292 (66.71% of T).
Let R_yes = 354,845 (51.57% of T).
The size of the intersection |M_yes ∩ R_yes| must satisfy:
- Maximum: min(M_yes, R_yes) = 354,845 (all recreational yes voters also
yes for medical).
- Minimum: max(0, M_yes + R_yes - T) = max(0, 462,292 + 354,845 - 693,872)
= 123,265 (the lowest possible overlap to not exceed T).
Thus, the proportion |M_yes ∩ R_yes| / R_yes ranges from 123,265 / 354,845
≈ 34.75% (minimum) to 354,845 / 354,845 = 100% (maximum).
To arrive at these bounds:
1. The maximum overlap occurs when R_yes is a subset of M_yes, which is
feasible since M_yes > R_yes.
2. The minimum overlap is derived from the inclusion-exclusion principle:
|M_yes ∪ R_yes| ≤ T, so |M_yes| + |R_yes| - |M_yes ∩ R_yes| ≤ T,
rearranging to |M_yes ∩ R_yes| ≥ M_yes + R_yes - T.
The probable value skews toward the maximum due to the strong positive
correlation between the positions (recreational support typically entails
medical support), making lower values unlikely without evidence ofcontrary
voter behavior. If assuming independence instead, the expected
intersection would be (0.6671 × 0.5157 × 693,872) ≈ 238,700, for a
proportion of 238,700 / 354,845 ≈ 67.27%. But given the topics' alignment,
the correlated estimate near 100% is more reasonable.
Ballot secrecy, a fundamental principle in democratic elections and
referendums, ensures that individual voters' choices remain private and
anonymous to prevent coercion, intimidation, or undue influence. In the
context of a multi-question referendum like Slovenia's on cannabis (where
voters answered separate yes/no questions on medical and recreational use
on the same ballot), this secrecy means that only aggregate totals for
each question are publicly reported—such as the overall yes/no counts and
percentages per issue. To determine the exact proportion of recreational
"yes" voters who also voted "yes" on medical cannabis, one would need
access to individual-level data to cross-tabulate responses across
questions. However, releasing or analyzing such granular data could
potentially allow for the identification or inference of specific voters'
full ballots (especially in smaller precincts or with additional
demographic details), thereby violating anonymity protections enshrined in
laws like Slovenia's Constitution and the Elections and Referenda Campaign
Act. As a result, election authorities deliberately avoid publishing or
even compiling joint distributions or overlaps between questions to uphold
this privacy safeguard.
What is the probability from these numbers that the result is truly
representative of all the registered voters?
Representativeness: A Statistical Assessment
This is really two separate questions bundled together — statistical
precision (sampling error) and selection bias (non-voter bias). They give
very different answers.
1. Statistical Precision — Essentially Perfect
With n = 693,872 voters from N = 1,692,371 registered voters, the
finite-population corrected margin of error at 95% confidence is:
MOE = 1.96 × √(p(1−p)/n) × √((N−n)/(N−1))
The finite population correction (FPC):
√((1,692,371 − 693,872) / (1,692,370)) = √(0.5901) ≈ 0.768
For medical cannabis (p = 0.6671):
> MOE = 1.96 × √(0.6671 × 0.3329 / 693,872) × 0.768 ≈ ±0.085%
For recreational cannabis (p = 0.5157):
> MOE = 1.96 × √(0.5157 × 0.4843 / 693,872) × 0.768 ≈ ±0.090%
For context, a typical opinion poll uses ~1,000 respondents and achieves
±3%. With nearly 700× more data points, the pure statistical precision
here is extraordinary. The probability that sampling error alone would
reverse either result is effectively >99.99% — practically zero.
2. Selection Bias — The Real and Unquantifiable Risk
Statistical precision is irrelevant if the 41% who voted are
systematically different from the 59% who didn't. This is the genuine
threat to representativeness, and it cannot be calculated from the numbers
alone.
The direction of likely bias:
The recreational result at 51.57% is particularly vulnerable — it passed
by only ~41,000 votes out of ~694,000. If non-voters were even modestly
less supportive (say, 48% instead of 52%), the true population preference
could flip. For medical cannabis at 66.71%, the margin is large enough
that bias would have to be extreme to reverse it.
3. The Honest Probability Estimate
The recreational result is close enough to 50% that non-voter bias of just
3–4 percentage points in the opposite direction would mean a majority of
all registered voters actually opposed it — a plausible scenario given
referendums on divisive topics tend to draw disproportionately motivated
supporters.
Bottom Line
The numbers are statistically rock-solid as a measure of what the voters
wanted. Whether they represent all registered voters is primarily a
political sociology question, not a math one — and the honest answer is
that the medical cannabis result almost certainly does, while the
recreational cannabis result cannot be confirmed with high probability
without post-vote surveying of non-participants.
Defendant's position
All recreational cannabis is medical cannabis whether the user agrees or
not. Effects are not governed by legal status (except in the case of
contamination which is more likely if illegal anyway). Contrary to the
weird logic of some, cannabis is not harmful because it is illegal;
however illegality does not make society safer. Cannabis does not know if
it is recreational, medical, legal or illegal.
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The Englishman stands for the rights of everyone disadvantaged,
discriminated against, persecuted, and prosecuted on the false or
absent bases of prohibition, and also believes the victims of these
officially-sanctioned prejudices have been appallingly treated and
should be pardoned and compensated.
The Englishman requests the return of his CaPs and other rightful
property, for whose distraint Slovenia has proffered no credible
excuse or cause.
The Benedictions represent both empirical entities as well as beliefs.
Beliefs which the Defence evidence shows may be reasonably and
earnestly held about the positive benefits of CaPs at the population
level, in which the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad. Below, the
latest version of this dynamic list.
THE BENEDICTIONS
REFERENCES
TIMELINE
OF DRUG LAW v. SCIENCE