It seems like everytime you open the newspaper and turn to the business section you see the same thing: some stock trader (weird yellow jumpsuit optional) looking dejected, head hanging low, shoulders slumped, slightly sweaty with a shot of the closing DOW numbers faintly displayed in the background. For months now, we’ve all been inundated with the images, specualtions, forecasts and predictions regarding the downward spiral that is the nation’s current economic status. Bail outs don’t seem to be working so well for bankers, but how do regular, everyday people deal with the looming monetary catastrophe?

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 Traditionally most people think of themselves as smokers or non-smokers and there hasn’t been a popular label for those who fall somewhere in between the two.  Health surveys often ask people survey questions that only offer the two options: smoker or non-smoker.  Some recent research has focused on the non-traditional smoker who smokes occasionally, on weekends, or when out socially with friends who smoke.  Identifying and focusing on the different varieties of smoking behavior is important for those in the prevention fields so that this large group of people are not ignored or lumped with non-smokers in survey data on which cessation research is based. 

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In 2001, the U.S. Congress dolled out $125 million dollars to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the hopes of deflating the increasingly bloated and sluggish schoolyard children across the country.  At that point, the amount of overweight children and adolescents had doubled, folded, and flopped over its total from 20 years prior.  Our nation was already pudgy, stereotypically, and the next generation was and perhaps still is prime to suck up the custard.  The CDC took that money, planned, and executed what they determined to be a nationwide social marketing campaign called VERB for the next 4 years.  But was it really social marketing? 

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Nothing like a hard day at school. B-ball practice, yearbook committee and that pep rally skit at lunch sure can make for a busy day. By the time you hop off the bus and walk through that front door, nothing sounds better than a nice cold Capri Sun and a handful of Grandma’s Percocet. Then it’s nothing but Spongebob and Dorito’s until mom gets home.

According to the New York-based Partnership for a Drug-Free America, 20 percent of teenagers have admitted to abusing prescription medication.  Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a decline in teen abuse rates for drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The only area of abuse that seems to be unchanged is teen prescription medication abuse. So, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America has teamed up with prescription drug maker, Abbott, to create a new campaign to combat prescription med abuse. The program, called Not In My House, seeks to educate both teens and parents about the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

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I wonder if obesity rates in the US would drop if upon unwrapping a hot, juicy McDonald’s hamburger, you were to uncover graphic images of bed-ridden, clinically obese individuals or gruesome photos of a gastric bypass surgery? New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tested this similar theory on cigarette consumers this week.

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There is little we know for certain about reducing tobacco use other than policy works. If a state increases the tobacco tax or passes a clean indoor air law, tobacco rates will go down. However, policy alone has not eliminated tobacco use anywhere—not even close. So what else is needed to fight tobacco? And what about those states where growing tobacco is a way of life—a way that families make their living, perhaps for many generations? What happens when policy is just not that easy to pass?

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Hey U, wake up and smell the smoke! While the smoking rates of college students have declined during the past decade, the tobacco industry has stepped up its game by targeting vulnerable college students at the places they love best: dorms, bars, nightclubs, and their school campuses. As explained in the U.S. News article Fewer College Kids Smoking, But Industry Tactics a Threat , tobacco conglomerates are spending millions a week targeting young adults during their life stage changes.

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OMG!

I was in high school when pagers were cool.  I knew where every pay phone in the city was, which ones were 25 cents vs 30 cents, and what phones wouldn’t take incoming calls.  Burger King parking lot was your best bet in Strongsville, Ohio.  But no more.  The tidal sweep of cell phones across culture has put pagers in sock drawers or  relegated them to doctors on E.R.   Though they are portable phones, it seems that actual phone calls are secondary to text messaging.  The Partnership for a Drug-Free America has recognized the power and popularity of this medium in teen culture and is promoting parent-to-child texting in their 2008 Time to Talk campaign.

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