Wood County Prevention Coalition
Uniting For A Drug-Free Community Since 2004
Newsletter for March 12 , 2020 Vol. #6 Issue #4
Alcohol ads lead to youth drinking, should be more regulated, experts say
JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS 2/24/2020
PISCATAWAY, NJ - The marketing of alcoholic beverages is one cause of underage drinking, public health experts conclude. Because of this, countries should abandon what are often piecemeal and voluntary codes to restrict alcohol marketing and construct government-enforced laws designed to limit alcohol-marketing exposure and message appeal to youth.
These conclusions stem form a series of eight review articles published as a supplement to the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, which synthesized the results of 163 studies on alcohol advertising and youth alcohol consumption.
"[T]here is persuasive evidence that exposure to alcohol marketing is one cause of drinking onset during adolescence and also one cause of binge drinking," write James D. Sargent, M.D., of the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth, and Thomas F. Babor, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of Connecticut, in a conclusion to the supplement.
Each of the eight review articles in the supplement evaluated a different aspect of alcohol marketing and drinking among young people. The reviews covered hundreds of studies that used different research designs and measurement techniques, and the data came from a variety of countries and scientific disciplines.
The authors of the reviews used the Bradford Hill criteria--a well-known framework for determining causal links between environmental exposures and disease--to determine whether marketing is a cause of youth alcohol use. The same criteria have been used to establish that smoking is a cause of cancer and that tobacco marketing is one cause of youth smoking. Hill's causality criteria involve determining the strength of association, consistency of the link, specificity of the association, temporal precedence of the advertising exposure, biological and psychological plausibility, experimental evidence and analogy to similar health risk exposures (e.g., tobacco advertising).
Sargent and Babor note that each of the Bradford Hill criteria were met within the eight reviews, supporting a modest but meaningful association between alcohol advertising and youth drinking.
Although such a relationship had been previously known, this is the first time any public health expert has explicitly concluded that advertising causes drinking among adolescents. As a result, the authors recommend the following:
Does vaping make you more susceptible to coronavirus?
BY CHRISTINA CAPATIDES
MARCH 10, 2020 / 6:08 PM / CBS NEWS
The CDC's latest National Youth Tobacco Survey found that a staggering 1 in 3 American high school students used some type of tobacco product in the previous 30 days, and for the vast majority of them that means e-cigarettes. Millions of teens have gotten hooked on vaping.
Last summer, that trend led to a disturbing uptick in deaths and serious respiratory illnesses among otherwise healthy young people linked to vaping. And now, experts caution that the habit might also make young people in the U.S. more susceptible to the coronavirus.
In a press briefing on Monday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed that, despite the fact that older people are generally most at risk of serious illness from coronavirus, one of the current cases in New York is an otherwise healthy 22-year-old man.
"Why is a 22-year-old man stable but hospitalized at this point? The one factor we know of is he is a vaper," de Blasio said. "So, we don't know of any preexisting conditions, but we do think the fact that he is a vaper is affecting this situation."
On Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reiterated its guidance that older Americans and people with medical conditions like cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and chronic lung disease are most susceptible to coronavirus. People who are immunosuppressed because they have cancer or they're on a type of medication that weakens their immune system are also more at risk.
But if what Mayor de Blasio is saying is true — if vaping is a factor in contracting the coronavirus illness, known as COVID-19 — then that could affect a huge group of Americans.
"Well, if there was ever a reason to quit, here's another one," Dr. Tara Narula, a CBS News medical contributor and a board certified cardiologist at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning." "Anything that's going to compromise your lungs is going to increase your risk of being susceptible. We know that smoking decreases your ability to really fight infection."
Dr. Joanna Cohen, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, agrees.
"We know through the deaths and severe respiratory illnesses that we had this summer that there's certainly lung injury happening to vapers," she told CBS News. "And if your lungs are injured, obviously they're going to have a more difficult time dealing with other challenges."
Both doctors pointed to early data coming out of China as possible evidence.
Australia looking to age restrict loot boxes
BY Ad Miral ON March 09, 2020
CalvinAyre.com
The new regulations require that any person purchasing videogame loot boxes will have to show ID. According to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, access to these boxes and other simulated gambling elements in computer or video games will be restricted to “adults aged 18 years or over, including through the use of mandatory age verification.”
Australia isn’t the first country to try and legislate against the practice. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a bill that would ban the sale of loot boxes to minors, despite taking criticism from gaming industry leaders.
ESA CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis, attacked the U.S. bill. “This legislation is flawed and riddled with inaccuracies,” he said. “It does not reflect how video games work nor how our industry strives to deliver innovative and compelling entertainment experiences to our audiences. The impact of this bill would be far-reaching and ultimately prove harmful to the player experience, not to mention the more than 220,000 Americans employed by the video game industry.”
But keeping loot boxes in check has become a fairly popular policy position. Former United States presidential candidate Andrew Yang also called for new regulations during his run for the presidency.
He explained that there is a very direct resemblance between gambling and loot boxes. “These mechanisms can seem similar to gambling because of the random outcome, keeping players (usually kids) engaged on the platform for longer or costing them hundreds or thousands of dollars in addition to the base cost of the game. Some games have a ‘free-to-play’ model, where the game itself is free but they’re funded by the purchase of these loot boxes.”
The United Kingdom is also arguing that loot boxes can become a gateway to gambling. The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) recently published a report that indicated that loot boxes are “polluting” youth, and that regulation should be implemented.
According to RSPH chief executive Shirley Cramer, even young people are seeing a need for regulation. “However, we, and the young people we’ve spoken to, are concerned at how firmly embedded gambling-type features are in many of these games. The rise of loot boxes and skin betting has seen young people introduced to the same mechanisms that underpin gambling, through an industry that operates unchecked and unregulated on the back alleys of the internet, which young people can access from their bedrooms.”
Belgium and the Netherlands have also added regulations banning the sale of these loot boxes to persons under 18, forcing game developers to remove them from their games in these markets.
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
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Twitter: @woodpccoalition