Wood County Prevention Coalition
Uniting For A Drug-Free Community Since 2004
With The Rise Of Legal Weed, Drug Education Moves From ‘Don’t’ to ‘Delay’
California legalized marijuana in 2016, and this past New Year’s Eve eager customers lined up in the darkness outside medical marijuana dispensaries across the state, ready to start shopping at the stroke of midnight.
The effect has gone beyond the cannabis cash register. Everyone has seen the ads or heard the chatter — and that includes minors, though marijuana remains illegal for those under 21.
“Coming out of SFO [San Francisco] airport, there are billboards for Eaze [a weed delivery service] that say ‘Marijuana is here,’” said Danielle Ramo, a psychologist who conducts research at University of California-San Francisco on adolescent drug use. “I’m not sure parents were expecting to see so many images of cannabis all over.”
The rollout of legal recreational marijuana in California and other states doesn’t appear to have led to any big changes in substance abuse prevention yet.
But drug prevention education in schools has evolved significantly since the “Just Say No” days of the ’80s — and now typically takes an approach that’s more appropriate for the era of ubiquitous weed access. It’s one that emphasizes decision-making and critical thinking skills instead of abstinence.
One approach is the Being Adept curriculum — an evidence-based course of study that has been used in about 20 schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It, and other drug abuse education today, draws on decades of rigorous effectiveness research and the newest teaching techniques.
The PSAs that Gen-Xers may remember — the egg in a frying pan (“This is your brain on drugs“), or the boy calling out his dad’s drug use (“I learned it by watching you!“) — live on as memes but are no longer used in information campaigns.
“Those scare-tactic-based programs have tended to quite clearly not work, based on most of the research that evaluated its effectiveness,” Ramo said. “Today, there is an entirely different mindset about school-based prevention.”
In a nutshell, the focus now is on facts, not fear. Also conspicuously absent are simplistic dictates like “Just say no.” Instead, teachers spur students to examine data, speculate on motives, discuss risks and deliberate on their own goals and values.
Ashley Brady, a Being Adept instructor, was completely open about her method when she stood in front of the eighth-graders at Marin Primary and Middle School, a private school in Larkspur.
“I’m not here to tell you what to do today. Not at all,” she began.
Fentanyl deaths up 1,000% since 2013, so much so that even heroin's supply is dwarfed
Terry DeMio,Published 10:21 p.m. Updated 5:13 a.m. ET June 7, 2018, cincinnati.com
The powerhouse opioid fentanyl has drenched the drug supply in Greater Cincinnati, dwarfing the presence of heroin sold on the streets.
More than 90 percent of drugs analyzed at the Hamilton County crime lab through May 3 this year have had the synthetic opiate in them.
Fentanyl crept into the drug stream around 2012. By 2013, fentanyl-related deaths amounted to 24. Last year? 324.
That's more than a 1,000 percent increase.
Fentanyl is king, says Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, co-chair of drug interdiction for the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition.
"Its power is immediate and death can be immediate, unlike anything we have seen from any other drug," Synan said. "Fentanyl and similar synthetic opiates have produced overdoses and deaths in not only unprecedented numbers but previously unimaginable."
"It is no longer a heroin epidemic but a synthetic-opiate epidemic," said Synan.
That's the case nationwide, said Synan, who takes part in a monthly national call about the opioid epidemic.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a research letter that stated that nearly half of opioid-related deaths in 2016 involved fentanyl.
Greater Cincinnati is an epicenter of the nation's opioid epidemic, and fentanyl-related deaths have raced way beyond half of opioid overdose deaths.
Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, Hamilton County coroner, said fentanyl or a combination of drugs including it was at fault in about 85 percent of the opioid overdose deaths her office saw last year.
"It's the small amounts of the extremely deadly substances that are killing people," she said, calling the uptick in fentanyl over the last few years "huge."
It could get worse.
The drug's chemical bonds can be altered to create additional types, or analogues, of fentanyl, with some of them more powerful than their predecessors. Sammarco's drug analysts have identified nine of these so far.
When it first appeared in the region's drug supply, narcotics agents said fentanyl was slipped into heroin, coaxing unwitting heroin users into an overdose danger they hadn't experienced before.
That still happens.
But now, more people who once sought heroin are asking dealers, or "dope boys" as they're often called, explicitly for fentanyl.
Apple Said It's Going to Help Us With Our Phone Addiction. This Study Indicates That's Probably a Good Thing
June 6, 2018 Fortune
At its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote this week, Apple said it’s going to try to help us with our phone addiction. And judging by a new study, that might be a good thing.
In a survey of 1,137 people conducted in March, cellular signal booster company SureCall found that people are really, really addicted to their phones. The study found that 69% of smartphone owners check their devices at the toilet and 22% are on their handsets even while they’re in the shower. Among the 10% of people who admit to checking their phones during sex, 43% of them have done so multiple times in the past year.
But it gets worse. According to SureCall, 27% of people said that they feel fear and anxiety when they’re without their phones and 30% feel anxiety when they’re not within cell service. Nearly three-quarters of people sleep with a phone on or near their beds and 16% of respondents told SureCall that they believe their romantic relationships are affected by their phone addiction.
Apple on Monday unveiled its new mobile operating system iOS 12 during its WWDC keynote. The operating system includes a variety of feature and performance upgrades and has added a new function that allows users to gain much better insight into the apps they use, when, and how. The idea is to surface for users just how much they’re tied to their smartphones and hopefully get them to step away.
Indeed, phone addiction is not a new phenomenon and has been discussed for years. But as an increasing number of people—and especially young people—focus so much of their time on their handsets, some industry giants are eyeing ways to curb that.
One of the features Apple unveiled in iOS 12 to address youth phone addiction is Allowances. It aims at giving parents tools to stop their kids from spending too much time in apps or categories of apps. Most importantly, it stops children from spending so much of their time on their phones.
According to SureCall, age appears to be a factor in phone addiction. Eighty-five percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34, for instance, admit to using their phones on the toilet. But 53% of people between the ages of 52 and 70 do the same. Similar differences in phone use appear in all the other metrics SureCall evaluated.
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