Our mission is to unite the Anderson Valley community in efforts that promote community health through grassroots organizing to reduce the presence of drugs in the community and prevent youth substance abuse.
Articles
The Kids Are More Than All Right
New York Times Well blog. February 2, 2012. Tara Parker-Pope.
Every few years, parents find new reasons to worry about their teenagers. And while there is no question that some kids continue to experiment with sex and substance abuse, the latest data point to something perhaps more surprising: the current generation is, well, a bit boring when it comes to bad behavior.
By several noteworthy measures, today’s teenagers are growing increasingly conservative. While marijuana use has recently had an uptick, teenagers are smoking far less pot than their parents did at the same age. In 1980, about 60 percent of high-school seniors had tried marijuana and 9 percent smoked it daily. Among seniors today, according to the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teenage risk behaviors since 1975, 45.5 percent have tried the drug and 6.6 percent are smoking it frequently.
Read the full article on The New York Times website.
Methamphetamine Use Increasing Again, Researchers Find
The University of Texas at Austin. January 24, 2012. Tim Green.
Use of methamphetamines is on the rise nationally after a decrease a few years ago, according to university researchers.
Use of meth dropped significantly in 2007 and 2008 after laws limiting the availability of pseudoephedrine went into effect made it much harder to obtain key ingredients.
However, indicators of meth use — reported identification of local meth labs, admissions to emergency rooms and treatment centers, arrest records and more — show that use increased in 2009 and 2010.
Jane Maxwell, a senior research scientist in the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin, and Mary Lynn Brecht, a researcher in the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles, reported their findings in the journal Addictive Behaviors in December 2011.
Read the full article on The University of Texas at Austin website.
Senators: Police seek help on drugged driving
Mercury News. January 29, 2012. Michael Gormley.
The federal government should help police departments nationwide obtain the tools and training needed to attack a rising scourge of driving under the influence, two U.S. senators said Sunday.
Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Mark Pryor of Arkansas proposed that federal funding in a pending transportation funding bill be used for research and to train police. They said police have no equipment and few have training in identifying drugged drivers, who don't show the same outward signs of intoxication as drunken drivers do, such as slurred speech.
“Cops need a Breathalyzer-like technology that works to identify drug-impaired drivers on-the-spot — before they cause irreparable harm,” Schumer said. “With the explosive growth of prescription drug abuse it’s vital that local law enforcement have the tools and training they need to identify those driving under the influence of narcotics to get them off the road.”
Read the full article on The Mercury News website.
Mendocino Students Create Campaign to Educate Peers on Drug and Alcohol Abuse
Ukiah Daily Journal. June 17, 2011. Carole Brodsky.
How do advertisers gather information about their market, and can these same techniques be utilized to encourage positive behaviors?
Through a federal Drug—Free Communities Grant awarded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration, students and staff of the Arbor on Main, in coordination with the county’s Health and Human Services Administration, addressed these issues. They created and implemented a social norms experiment which resulted in a novel media campaign focusing on youth drug and alcohol use. The project was part of the Rural Murals program.
This article is no longer available on The Ukiah Daily Journal website..
Sheriff’s Budget Situation Improves
The Ukiah Daily Journal. June 21, 2011. Tiffany Revelle.
Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman reported Tuesday that he has a workable budget for the first time in six years.
Allman’s $19.5 million piece of the county's general fund for the 2011—12 county budget is almost $1 million more than CEO Carmel Angelo’s originally recommended allocation, coming within $1.4 million of what he said his department needs to meet operating costs.
Read the whole article on The Ukiah Daily Journal website..
Victory on Stopping Bus Bench Alcohol Ads
MarinInstitute.org. June 10, 2011.
LOS ANGELES, CA — The Coalition to Ban Alcohol Ads from Public Property organized a lively grassroots rally in Los Angeles City Hall Plaza this morning to send a message to the L.A. Board of Public Works that promoting alcohol on city—owned bus benches was a really bad idea. The Board heard the concerns and agreed by asking for a full ban on all alcohol ads in the new contract. The contractor, Martin Outdoor Media, LLC quickly agreed. There will be no alcohol ads on 6,000 L.A. city—owned bus benches. This will reduce youth exposure to messages that are feeding an epidemic of underage alcohol consumption and harm.
Read the whole article on The Marin Institute website..
National Survey Reveals Increases in Substance Use From 2008 to 2009
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
This report presents the first information from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual survey sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The survey is the primary source of information on the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco in the civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States aged 12 years old or older. The survey interviews approximately 67,500 persons each year. Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons in this report described using terms such as “increased,” “decreased,” or “more than" are statistically significant at the .05 level.
Read the full report on the website for the Office of Applied Studies.
A Dutch City Seeks to End Drug Tourism
The New York Times. August 17, 2010. Suzanne Daley.
MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — On a recent summer night, Marc Josemans’s Easy Going Coffee Shop was packed. The lines to buy marijuana and hashish stretched to the reception area where customers waited behind glass barriers.
Most were young. Few were Dutch.
Thousands of “drug tourists” sweep into this small, picturesque city in the southeastern part of the Netherlands every day — as many as two million a year, city officials say. Their sole purpose is to visit the city’s 13 “coffee shops,” where they can buy varieties of marijuana with names like Big Bud, Amnesia and Gold Palm without fear of prosecution.
Read the whole article on The New York Times website..
Californians must look at science of marijuana
SFGate.com. August 22, 2010. Timmen Cermak.
Like so many political debates in our society, the argument over Proposition 19, the initiative to legalize marijuana in California, is portrayed as good vs. evil, black vs. white, us vs. them — while nobody is looking objectively at the medical science of marijuana. If research does enter the debate, each side touts the scientific bits that bolster its arguments and then ignores the rest.
The California Society of Addiction Medicine is in a unique position: We take no position on Prop. 19, but we wish Californians would look at the research before they make up their minds on how to vote.
Read the whole article on the SFGate website..
Racked by drug violence, Mexico wary of Calif. vote on legalizing marijuana
The Washington Post. September 10, 2010. Nick Miroff and William Booth.
TIJUANA, MEXICO &mdashp; To embattled authorities here, where heavily armed soldiers patrol the streets and more than 500 people have been killed this year, marijuana is a poisonous weed that enriches death-dealing cartel bosses who earn huge profits smuggling the product north.
“Marijuana arrives in the United States soaked with the blood of Tijuana residents,” said Mayor Jorge Ramos, whose police department has lost 45 officers to drug violence in the past three years.
Read the whole article on the Washington Post website..
Did you know? 8 out of 10 AV High School Students have eaten fruit during the past 24 hours.*
*from AVHS California Healthy Kids Survey 2010