CDC: Teens now favor pot over cigarettes

Well, at least they'll live longer...-jef
 

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By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Friday, June 8, 2012

 

 

A study released Friday (PDF) by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that in 2011, for the first time ever, more American teens were smoking marijuana than cigarettes.

The CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey tracks drug abuse, among other potential destructive behaviors, by surveying high school students across the country. The agency said it collected data from more than 15,000 surveys taken in 43 states and 21 large urban school districts.

The result: Marijuana is officially more popular than cigarettes among U.S. teens, for the first time ever. A full 23 percent of students surveyed told the CDC they had used marijuana within the last month, whereas just 18 percent said they had smoked cigarettes.

The findings are consistent with a Raw Story analysis of the 2011 Partnership for a Drug-Free America report on teen drug abuse, which found that marijuana’s popularity has exploded since 2008. By comparing the Partnership’s data to prior CDC studies, Raw Story concluded that marijuana use had finally exceeded cigarette smoking among U.S. teens, which the CDC has now confirmed directly.

The Partnership’s report noted that almost half of American teens (47 percent) said they have used marijuana at least once, representing a 21 percent increase over their 2008 study. The CDC, on the other hand, noted in 2009 that 30 percent of high school students reported having experimented with cigarette smoking at least once, down from 39 percent in 2000, while about 24 percent had used a tobacco product (including chewing tobacco) recently, down from 34.5 percent.

There are several possible ways to contextualize the swing among American teens from cigarettes to marijuana, but one sticks out above all the rest: the economic recession.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire reported in 2010 that they had debunked the “gateway drug” theory through scientific analysis of assorted risk factors that contribute to the desire to abuse more destructive drugs like heroin or prescription pills. Instead of early experiences with marijuana weighing significantly on that decision, researchers found that other stress factors like unemployment weigh much more in determining a teen’s likelihood to become addicted to harder, potentially lethal drugs.

“Employment in young adulthood can protect people by ‘closing’ the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities,” one of the study’s authors said in a press release.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in April that teen unemployement was hovering around 25 percent, down from 27 percent in 2009 — its highest rate since the Great Depression, and roughly 10 percent higher than the teen unemployment rate in the years leading up to the near economic collapse of 2008.

Added: Since no such regulatory framework exists for marijuana, and since drug dealers do not tend to check IDs, most youths told the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in 2009 (PDF) that pot is easier to purchase than regulated substances.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has consistently raised issue with “youth-penalty laws” (PDF) that punish kids for using tobacco, saying the laws are favored by tobacco companies because they oppose the truly effective means of control, like public education, restrictions on marketing and increased retail prices. By agreeing to penalize the end user, the Campaign claims that lawmakers ultimately just “divert the police from their efforts to stop retailers from illegally selling tobacco products to kids,” which results in breeding “disrespect for the law” among young people.

The Drug Policy Alliance, America’s leading drug policy reform group, says something startlingly similar about marijuana.

“It’s time to step back and ask ourselves what’s the best way to solve the problem we’re trying to solve—how to reduce drug abuse and addiction—and use the best available evidence to guide us,” Jag Davies, publications manager for The Drug Policy Alliance, said in a recent advisory. “And, ultimately, it’s time to bring marijuana out of the shadows and under the rule of law. The evidence shows that the most effective way to reduce teen marijuana use would be to regulate it in a manner similar to alcohol, with age limits, licensing controls, and other regulatory restrictions.”

Will Cigarettes Be Made Illegal in the Near Future?

(The two most dangerous drugs which factor into the most health problems and result in the most deaths, BY FAR, are both legal: alcohol and tobacco kill half a million people per year. Did I mention both are legal?--jef)

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The battle over cigarettes is heating up -- and the momentum to criminalize tobacco smoking continues to build in the United States and around the world. 

By Tony Newman, AlterNet on January 20, 2011

Will cigarettes be illegal in the future? The battle over cigarettes is heating up - and recent news shows that momentum to criminalize tobacco smoking continues to build in the United States and around the world.

Last week the New York Times reported on the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan's war on cigarette smokers. Back in 2005 Bhutan banned the sale of tobacco but made little headway as smugglers brought in cigarettes from India. Now the country is enforcing the ban by allowing authorities to break down doors looking for illegal cigarettes. People who sell illegal cigarettes are now facing five year sentences. Breaking down doors and long sentences over the tobacco plant! Sounds familiar? If it does, it's because that's how the U.S. deals with the marijuana and coca plants.

And the creeping criminalization of tobacco is not only happening in far away places, but right here in the "Land of the Free."

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the FDA is looking into banning menthol cigarettes. The argument by some antismoking groups is that menthol cigarettes are enticing to adolescent smokers and have been marketed to the African American community. A ban on menthols would build on the FDA's ban last year on flavored cigarettes and cloves.

While I support many restrictions on public smoking, such as at restaurants and workplaces, and I appreciate public education campaigns and efforts aimed at discouraging young people from smoking, I believe the prohibition of menthols would inevitably lead to harmful and unintended consequences.

For millions of people, menthols are their smoke of choice. I have no doubt that someone is going to step in to meet this demand. What do we propose doing to the people who are caught selling illegal menthol cigarettes? Are cops going to have to expend limited resources to enforce this ban? Are we going to arrest and lock up people who are selling the illegal cigarettes? Prisons are already bursting at the seams (thanks to drug laws) across the country. Are we going to waste more taxpayer money on criminalization and incarceration?

The prohibition of flavored cigarettes also moves us another step closer to total cigarette prohibition. Last year it was cloves. This year it may be menthol. And why not all cigarettes next year? Cigarettes kill; 400,000 people die prematurely every year from smoking. When we analyze the harm from drugs, there is no doubt that cigarettes are the worst. Considering how harshly we deal with less harmful drugs like marijuana, by that same flawed logic cigarettes should be illegal too.

But with all the good intentions in the world, outlawing cigarettes would be just as disastrous as the prohibition of other drugs. After all, people would still smoke, just as they still use other drugs that are prohibited, from marijuana to cocaine. But now, in addition to the harm of smoking, there would be a whole range of "collateral consequences," such as black market-related violence, that crop up with prohibition.

Remember, banning marijuana and coca plants have led to 35,000 deaths in Mexico due to prohibition over just the past four years. Imagine what banning the tobacco plant would do. We would have a black market, with outlaws taking the place of delis and supermarkets, stepping in to meet the demand and provide the desired drug.

Instead of buying your cigarettes in a legally sanctioned place, you would have to hit the streets to pick up your fix. The cigarette trade would provide big revenue to "drug dealers," just as illegal drugs do today. There would be shootouts in the streets and killings over the right to sell the illicit substance.

We need to realize that drugs that already have an established demand, whether cigarettes or marijuana or alcohol, will always be consumed, whether they are legal or illegal. Although drugs have health consequences and dangers, making them illegal - and keeping them illegal - will only bring additional death and suffering.

We should celebrate our success curbing cigarette smoking and continue to encourage people to cut back or give up cigarettes, but let's not get carried away and think that criminalizing smoking or making cigarettes illegal is the answer.

How Not to Stop Smoking

Suppressing thoughts of smoking just increases the likelihood you’ll light up later on
By Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune.com
Posted on August 16, 2010

Over the past 25 years, a series of studies have found suppressing unwanted thoughts is not only ineffective, but counterproductive. Try to not think of a white bear, and chances are the creature will come roaring into your mind.

In 2007, British psychologist James Erskine applied this dynamic to diet. He reported women instructed not to think about chocolate consumed more of the high-calorie treat when offered it, and suggested this rebound effect may explain the failure of so many dieters to lose weight over the long term.

Now, in a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Science, he and two colleagues provides evidence that thought suppression can also sabotage attempts to quit smoking.

Their study featured 85 regular cigarette smokers (42 men and 43 women). While 70 percent of them had attempted to quit smoking at some point, none were actively attempting to do so at the time of the experiment.

Each day for three weeks, participants recorded the number of cigarettes they smoked that day, as well as their stress level. One week into the experiment, one-third of the smokers were asked to “try not to think about smoking. If you do happen to have thoughts about smoking this week, please try to suppress them.” Another third were instructed to think about smoking as frequently as possible during the week. The final third received neither instruction.

During that second week, “the suppression group smoked considerably less than both the expression group (those encouraged to think about smoking) and the control group,” the researchers reported. But the situation reversed itself in Week Three, as those in the suppressed-thoughts group smoked considerably more than those in the other two categories.

“This suggests that in the short term, suppression may be effective in reducing unwanted behavior,” Erskine and his colleagues write. “This may explain a troublesome aspect of thought suppression — that individuals perceive the strategy as beneficial.”

Which it is — but only until the rebound hits.

Those in the suppression group reported higher stress levels in Week Two than those in the other two groups, but the researchers found this effect was not responsible for the increase in Week Three smoking. Rather, the results appear to reflect a pure bounce-back effect: The white bear returns, carrying a carton of Pall Malls.<

In the researchers’ view, these results “suggest that thought suppression may be more harmful than previously believed,” especially for struggling addicts. So if you’re craving a cigarette, let the image of that glowing cylinder linger in your mind until it fades away on its own. Pushing it aside only makes it more likely you’ll light up later.