Wood County Prevention Coalition
Uniting For A Drug-Free Community Since 2004
Energy drinks are still killing kids in America
Yahoo Lifestyle 12 February 2018
In January, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver urged the British government to take a stand against energy-drink consumption among children, calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to ban them for kids under 16. “The problem is much bigger than [caffeine],” Oliver says in a video posted to the Mirror. “It’s about the fact that so many kids are saying they’re addicted to them.”
On Oliver’s show, Friday Night Feast, Laura Matthews, his head of nutrition, highlighted the drink’s high sugar and caffeine content as problematic. “A typical energy drink contains 27.5g of total sugars in one 250ml can—equivalent to almost seven cubes of sugar,” Matthews said. “This is more than a child aged 7 to 10 should consume in a whole day!”
Within weeks of Oliver’s crusade, three major supermarket chains in the U.K. announced that they would now ID people buying energy drinks and refuse to sell to the products to anyone under age 16. It’s a huge step forward for the country, where 69 percent of adolescents have reported trying one in the past year alone.
But in the United States, where the consumption of energy drinks has been linked to multiple deaths, there remains little regulation of the products.
The drinks first hit the market as “dietary supplements” under the Food and Drug Administration, a classification that allowed makers to sell the products without revealing the ingredients — generally exceedingly high levels of caffeine and sugar, with additives like taurine, guarana, or ginseng.
Since entering the U.S. market in the late 1990s (after originating in Japan), they’ve exploded in America, yielding $25 billion in sales in 2016 alone. One of the fastest-growing beverage markets, experts now say the energy-drink segment is projected to reach $84.8 billion by 2025.
Red Bull, the first energy drink in the U.S., dominates the market, followed by Monster, and then smaller brands like Rockstar and Nos. With brightly colored ads and labels, the companies have been criticized for gearing their marketing to kids. Although the companies deny targeting youth, a 2014 study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that teenagers watched 30 percent more Red Bull and five-hour-energy ads than adults.
As the drinks began to take off in America, the negative health effects in the demographic guzzling them — namely, kids — began to skyrocket. As early as 2005, a toxicologist tracked 4,500 caffeine-related calls to poison control, half of them for people under the age of 19. By 2011, poison control centers were reporting fatalities from kids including — in that year’s report — a 14-year-old girl who “went limp while watching television after drinking from a large container of caffeinated energy drink.” The girl, who was rushed to the ER unconscious, did not survive, with her cause of death listed as “cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity.”
That same year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a clinical report warning pediatricians that energy drinks were “never appropriate” for kids, pointing to “harmful effects” on the “developing neurologic and cardiovascular systems” in children and adolescents who consume high levels of caffeine.
More teens sneaking vaping devices that look like flash drives, markers into suburban high schools
Vikki Ortiz Healy Chicago Tribune
2/20/18
Smoking in the bathroom has returned with a vengeance and a twist at some Chicago-area high schools, where administrators worry that new ways to get a nicotine fix are making the illegal habit even more appealing to students, and harder for teachers to catch.
Educators say they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of students caught vaping on campus in recent months. Teens use devices that range from a JUUL — a slim, rectangular device that looks like a USB flash drive — to e-cigarettes, which resemble highlighter markers or oversized lipsticks.
Illinois law prohibits anyone 17 and younger from buying or possessing tobacco of any kind, and state lawmakers are considering a proposal to raise the age to 21 statewide. In 14 cities across the state, including Chicago, the legal age for purchasing tobacco has been raised to 21.
But that hasn’t stopped local students from sneaking vaping devices into their backpacks, shirt sleeves and lockers.
“There’s a glory to this,” Bill Walsh, principal at Hinsdale Central High School, said of students smoking e-cigarettes. He said at least 30 vaping devices were confiscated in January, compared with less than a handful each year in previous years. “I don’t think students understand what the long-term effect is.”
Last month, a panel of health experts convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report that showed that young people who begin with e-cigarettes are more likely to transition to combustible cigarette use, putting them at higher risk for addiction. The report, which was requested by a division of the FDA, is the most comprehensive analysis of existing research on e-cigarettes.
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a public service announcement last week urging parents to learn the various names for e-cigarettes and what they look like, because e-cigarettes can be especially addictive for developing brains. The announcement comes a year after the academy joined other health organizations in a report urging the FDA to prohibit all candy- and fruit-flavored tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco, asserting that these products are undermining national efforts to reduce youth tobacco use and placing children at risk.
Still, those working to keep kids away from e-cigarettes say several factors still stand in the way of their efforts: E-cigarettes are easily available online and at a growing number of storefronts, many times without measures in place to keep away underage users. They are offered in flavors appealing to children, including chocolate, mango and creme brulee.
And the devices are so new and can be so discreet that many parents don’t realize that their children are carrying them, said advocates, who added that more needs to be done to ensure that e-cigarettes and related products do not end up in the hands of children.
Prompted in part by the rise of vaping among their peers, some students at Stevenson High School approached state Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Deerfield, about sponsoring a bill that would raise the legal age of tobacco and tobacco-related purchases to 21 statewide.
A former bully who went back to high school as an adult realized bullying isn't the same problem it used to be — it's worse
Feb. 20, 2018, 2:44 PM Business Insider
One of the toughest parts of a teenager's high-school experience is dealing with bullies.
And although many parents have memories of getting picked on, that's nothing compared to what students are facing today.
At least that's what Erin, a 26-year-old childcare worker from Milwaukee, discovered after going undercover for a semester at a Kansas high school.
Erin, who described herself as a former bully, was one of seven young adults featured on the A&E documentary series "Undercover High," which follows the adults as they pose as students at Highland Park High School in Topeka, Kansas. The undercover participants immersed themselves in student life throughout the spring 2017 semester to get a better understanding of the struggles today's teenagers are dealing with.
Erin told Business Insider that technology has allowed bullying to escalate to unprecedented heights.
"People are much more courageous behind a keyboard. They say things they never would have the guts to say in front of someone. So the attacks on people are more vicious than they used to be," Erin told Business Insider. "It still hurts whether it's in person or on social media, but I think that because social media allows people to be more bold, it's hurting deeper than it used to."
Erin's account was echoed by a Highland Park student who told cameras he's seen "a few people make fake pages just so they can be anonymous and basically make fun of people without nobody knowing who it is."
Erin said that when she was a high-schooler in Gurnee, Illinois, she initially began picking on people to compensate for her small stature.
"I wasn't confident in who I was, so I did what I needed to do to make myself stand out," she said.
"As a young teenager I thought, oh, if the people I'm friends with think it's funny then it's not a big deal," she said.
The turning point for Erin came midway through high school after she got breast-reduction surgery, which prompted hateful comments from her fellow classmates.
"I would walk in the hallway and people would point at me and whisper. Or I'd be sitting in class and people would talk about it," she told Business Insider. "It wasn't something I could hide. I was getting a lot of verbal attacks and that's when I realized that what I was doing wasn't OK."
While she was posing as a student at Highland Park, Erin joined an anti-bullying club and shared with the other students her experience of going from bully to victim.
"I've been in both shoes and I've experienced it from both sides, so it was really easy for me to help them connect them to the person that was hurting them and help them realize it's not really about hurting you — it's about them hurting themselves and thinking they're going to find peace through their hurt," she said.
Administrators at the school are aware of the cyberbullying problem and have seen the devastating consequences. Bullying contributes to anxiety and depression, studies have shown, and assistant principal Daniel Ackerman said it even led one student to transfer out of the school.
The Next Wood County Prevention Coalition Meeting: March 9th
Know the Options * Get the Facts: Safe Storage of Prescription Medications
Wood County Prevention Coalition Community Meeting
Friday, Mar 9, 2018, 08:30 PM
Wood County Educational Services, Research Drive, Bowling Green, OH, United States
RSVPs are enabled for this event.
About Us
Our Vision: Helping youth be drug-free, productive and responsible citizens.
Our Mission: We are a coalition of compassionate community members working together to coordinate high quality programs for the prevention of youth substance abuse in Wood County.
Email: mkarna@wcesc.org
Website: wcprevention.org
Location: 1867 Research Drive, Bowling Green, OH, United States
Phone: (419)-354-9010
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WCPCoalition
Twitter: @woodpccoalition