Binge drinking less and making fewer babies…
There are a lot of negative stories. I thought I would post a positive story about our teens. The mumbers are improving quite a bit.
http://m.startribune.com/today-s-teens-defy-parents-by-smoking-drinking-less/392769051/
On the other side, there sure are a lot of people who have used prescription drugs in the past year.
And there are a lot of people suffering from mental illness and addiction who aren’t receiving treatment.
I was walking across campus today and passed a very fit, tanned, athletic-looking young woman. She was smoking a cigarette (against the rules on campus, but they’re not enforced much). It was just so incongruous.
Vaping is still increasing in our state, especially among teens. It can lead to long term use. The term “smoking” can be ambiguous to many folks surveyed and to them doesn’t include Vaping, hookah, pot, and other substances that may have been intended by surveyors to be included. It is very challenging for providers, surveyors, electronic health records, etc to capture all of this and provide accurate info b
I can’t hide my disgust when people of my generation smoke. I can’t help it. And even if I could, I don’t know if I would.
It is funny, I remember reading future predictions from 40, 50 years ago, that said by now tobacco would be as illegal as heroin is. While I am grateful that smoking has gone from the way it was, when I was young, where people smoked everywhere and non smoking was limited to things like elevators, hospitals and the subway (people smoked in supermarkets, didn’t think twice what that smoke was doing to things like the fish counter or other places where food was exposed)., I am also sorry that it is dug in so deep. Vaping bothers me, the industry was allowed to flourish without regulation and rather than being a controlled device to help people stop smoking, it now has become the new cigarette, and while so far places that ban smoking don’t allow vaping, at least they do around here, I wonder how long it will be until they figure out that even though it doesn’t have the carcinogens that cigarette smoking has, it has long term health consequences from the nicotine being delivered that way (and from what I can tell of vape ads, you can get it in all kinds of concentrations).
Hopefully kids aren’t buying vapes as being this fun, safe, cool adult thing to do…I don’t have the negative impressions of teens many people do, I remember what people said about my generation, I just will hope they have more sense then to support the tobacco industry in any of its forms.
I believe studies are showing there ARE carcinogens in vaping fluid and folks put all kinds of things in the “vaping” holder, including “ice”/methamphetamine, cocaine, whatever they choose. I hope FDA steps up QUICKLY to regulate vaping. In HI, we were the 1st state to ban sales of tobacco AND electronic smoking devices to people under 21. Trying to enforce it, especially over the internet is another story, but at least the law is in place. Other states are trying to follow.
Personally, I don’t see the vaping thing catching on as something people do widespread in public. It’s not that cool, in fact, it looks kind of stupid. Just sayin’
Smoking looks stupid, too, and yet…
I despise going into states where you can still smoke in restaurants. Blows my mind that it’s a still thing in some places.
I also go over to Canada if I want to go to a casino. Smoking there is banned in all indoors places whereas here in MI, you can smoke in casinos. Yuck.
I just avoid casinos–smoke is horrible for me and gambling is also not something I’m willing to do–parting with cash for a “chance” of winning or losing just doesn’t appeal.
Sadly, the tobacco companies are targeting youth with their marketing. They use the formulation from jolly rancher candy and others to bake the “juice” for the flavored stuff to put in the ESDs–electronic smoking devices. They have USB ports on the ESDs and do everything they can to make them cool, including having lots of YouTube and other ads. They offer free “samples” over the Internet and by email.
I never worry about my kids smoking. It was the one thing my parents asked us kids not to do when we were in high school, and none of us ever did (we did plenty of other bad things). My mother comes from a family of smokers, my father’s father died from emphysema. We all found smoking gross. My kids have never been exposed to it at all.
My daughter was on oxygen when she was a baby and the tanks came with signs and posters I was supposed to post on all the doors of my house to keep smokers out. I told them I didn’t need them as I’d take care of anyone who tried to smoke in my house, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
They wear seat belts and don’t text and drive either.
I wonder how much of it is for pain, especially as folks have chronic pain and don’t want to keep relying on conventional pain relievers with potential side effects.
That’s a lot lower than I would’ve expected.
There is a HUGE difference between “smoking” and “using” marijuana and it seems like they used these interchangeably. I never smoke but I use marijuana regularly.
Using edible forms of MJ can be quite effective for a variety of symptoms and shouldn’t cause the respiratory issues that smoking it may. There is still work being done to figure out how to have more consistent dosing/strength of edible forms of MJ, according to the scientists I heard in 5/2015 presentation in Denver.
Edible mj is horribly unreliable. It seems that most of the overdoses here in Legal Colorado are caused by edibles, including one where a husband killed his wife as she was on the phone with 911, just a few blocks from the police station and they couldn’t get there fast enough. He’d had 2-3 lollipops.
They can get all the dosing/strength correct, and someone can still eat 5 candies instead of 2 or 3 cookies instead of just 1. It is much harder to smoke 5x the joints.