Are the American public and government missing the signs in a shift in drug abuse amongst the nation’s youth? Abuse of medication used to treat ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) is on the rise and it seems to have a direct correlation to a spike in prescribing habits during the late 1980s and early 90s.
According to a study conducted by Pediatrics (the official journal of the American academy of pediatrics) there has been a sharp rise in abuse by teenagers in the last decade.
OBJECTIVE: We sought to better understand the trend for prescription attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication abuse by teenagers.
METHODS: We queried the American Association of Poison Control Center’s National Poison Data System for the years of 1998–2005 for all cases involving people aged 13 to 19 years, for which the reason was intentional abuse or intentional misuse and the substance was a prescription medication used for ADHD treatment. For trend comparison, we sought data on the total number of exposures. In addition, we used teen and preteen ADHD medication sales data from IMS Health’s National Disease and Therapeutic Index database to compare poison center call trends with likely availability.
RESULTS: Calls related to teenaged victims of prescription ADHD medication abuse rose 76%, which is faster than calls for victims of substance abuse generally and teen substance abuse. The annual rate of total and teen exposures was unchanged. Over the 8 years, estimated prescriptions for teenagers and preteenagers increased 133% for amphetamine products, 52% for methylphenidate products, and 80% for both together. Reports of exposure to methylphenidate fell from 78% to 30%, whereas methylphenidate as a percentage of ADHD prescriptions decreased from 66% to 56%. Substance-related abuse calls per million adolescent prescriptions rose 140%.
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Phil Mickelson, right, participates in the Masters' tradition of passing the green jacket from the previous year's winner (Angel Cabrera) to the current winner.
The script was written, edited and ready to be acted out on the Augusta National Golf Course this past weekend.
A fallen hero. A damsel in distress. A chance to rise again.
What more could the American public wish for?
Well, congratulations America, you got your happy ending even if the participants weren’t who you expected them to be.
While everyone was watching one Eldrick Tont “Tiger” Woods play competitive golf for the first time since his sex scandal broke nearly five months ago and either rooting for him to reclaim the mountain top or stumble down the side again, the real fairy tale was playing out with rival Phil Mickelson at center stage.
Mickelson won his third Green Jacket and fourth career Major with his wife, Amy, by his side — the first time she attended one of his golf tournaments since being diagnosed with breast cancer 11 months ago. By the time they shared a teary-eyed embrace just off the 18th green, nearly everyone in attendance could feel the emotions flowing over and, if only for a moment, forgot about the reason they were watching all week long: Tiger.
In a week that seemed scripted by network executives, Tiger made every attempt to ensure the spotlight remained on him. There was the Nike commercial featuring a voiceover from his deceased father, the impromptu press conferences, vowing to tone down his emotions on the course, and making this ill-advised comparison to Ben Hogan. Yes, there were moments where Woods connected with the patrons and showed some humility, but it all still felt a bit rehearsed, a bit forced.
At the end of the day it was Mickelson who emerged from the background where Woods’ scandal had pushed he and everyone else, and he brought his family to the foreground with him.
And, that, is how a celebrity should bring his family into the public eye, but ultimately that’s not what the American public wants, nor is it what the American media is willing to sell.
So that begs the question, who is responsible for the disproportionate amount of attention lavished on celebrity scandals? Does it come down to ignoring their antics the way we would a child crying out for attention? How does this cycle get fixed?
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Members of the Dynamo Supporters Alliance gather on the proposed site for the team's new stadium in an effort to expedite the approval process. (photo courtesy of Katy Umaña)
Well, the 2010 Major League Soccer season is officially here and the Dynamo are already getting some good news. Fist came word that there would be no players’ strike, and then there was this breakthrough in the ongoing battle for a soccer-specific stadium. Add to those positive developments the fact that Reliant Stadium will host the 2010 MLS All-Star Game, and Houston soccer fans have a lot to look forward to.
As for the stadium, what once seemed like a lost cause 20-plus months into the process now seems to be gaining steam. The proposed six-block East End site was purchased for $15.5 million by the city in March 2008 with the goal being to build a 20,000-seat stadium. The tab for the proposed stadium has been set at around $80 million, and the Dynamo have indicated they were willing to foot $60 million.
The hold up has been the remaining $20 million, and the city and Harris County have agreed to jointly pay using a a tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ. Harris County would join the city’s East Downtown TIRZ, which could use its increment to sell bonds backed by tax revenue to finance its portion of improvements.
Dynamo President Oliver Luck said the terms of the proposed deal were “more favorable” to the public than those for Minute Maid Park, the Toyota Center and Reliant Stadium. The stadium, if completed, will be “symbolic of the fact that (soccer) has arrived.”
Others, though, have not been as receptive or supportive. Soccer message boards and comments sections of various articles covering the deal have been littered with disapproval. Most cite the city’s budget shortfall and lagging economy as reasons why the city should not use taxpayers’ money for the project. Some have taken it as far as insinuating that soccer is a “foreigners’ game” and therefore U.S. municipalities should stay away.
I want to know what you think. Take the poll below and let your voice be heard!
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By now most people are aware of the toll our nation’s economic crisis has taken on the print media forum. Already suffering from a failure to proactively deal with the advent of the internet over a decade ago, the newspaper industry is now playing catch-up and losing readers and advertisers along the way.
One area especially feeling the crunch is the Hispanic newspaper market, both Spanish-language publications and those written in English. Just in the last year several major U.S. cities have either ceased publishing of dailies altogether or have gone to an online-only format. Houston lost El Día after 30 years, El Nuevo DM-ma Orlando folded in August 2008 and Dallas-based Al Día decided to go to a twice-a-week publication schedule.
But Hispanic or Spanish-only weeklies are doing a good job of dodging the newspaper apocalypse.
The annual survey of the Hispanic print industry conducted by Latino Print Network, based in Carlsbad, California, found that the number of daily Spanish-language newspapers fell 31 percent to 29 between 2005 and 2008. Circulation for these newspapers dropped 29.2 percent.
However, the number of weekly newspapers tracked by Latino Print Network rose 21 percent, to 424, in the last three years. Circulation for weekly newspapers expanded as well – up 5.9 percent to 11.8 million readers in the same period.
Advertising revenue for Spanish-language daily newspapers reflect the same pattern. Revenue fell 30.1 percent, to $427 million, between 2005 and 2008 after exponential growth since 1990, when the total was just $76 million.
But revenue growth has continued for weekly newspapers – increasing 27.3 percent to $440 million. Spanish-language magazines also saw revenue expand 6.8 percent, to $352 million.
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Denis Mukwege meet Eve Ensler. It’s a match made in advocacy heaven.
Mukwege is a medical doctor doing wonderful work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ensler is a playwright, performer and activist most famously known for writing The Vagina Monologues.
She is also the founder V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
Last year Ensler teamed up with Mukwege as part of V-Day’s “Turning Pain into Power” tour, a five-city North American speaking tour that aims to educate people about the plight of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Denis Mukwege. Ever heard of him?
Mukwege is a 54-year old physician who has been instrumental in improving the health of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s people and specializes in treating the region’s rape victims — a sizable portion of the population.
He was also a 2009 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mukwege’s story started at a young age, visiting the region as a child with his father and later returning after studying medicine in Burundi. Eventually he worked at the Christian hospital of Lemera in South-Kivu of the DRC and after further witnessing the carnage amongst the region’s women, decided to study gynecology and obstetrics at the CHU of Angers in France.
Those experiences led him to found the Panzi General Hospital in the provincial capital of Bakavu which today treats more than 300 women per month, according to its website.
Mukwege’s work is especially needed given the nature and frequency of the attacks. These women are not being raped simply for the sexual gratification, but instead are victims of a civil war. These guerrilla factions are using rape as a weapon of mass destruction, destroying women from within and destroying their communities in the process.
In an interview with Time, Mukwege described the effects of these rapes by armed military groups:
“Once they have raped these women in such a public way,” he said, “sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs — and with everybody watching — the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatized and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence.
“The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped.
“Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.”
Below is a video highlighting some of Mukwege’s work.
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In the wake of the Haitian earthquake and the numerous aftershocks that followed, there has been an outpouring of support from all corners of the globe as people mobilized almost instantaneously, using the power of the internet and social media. Unfortunately, there has also been an outpouring of misinformation surrounding the religious beliefs of the island nation, and some of it has been downright laughable.
We as a society that grows m0re dependent on technology by the day, must expect the good with the bad. For every accurate nugget of information found on sites like Wikipedia, there are countless examples of bloggers overstepping their bounds by presenting opinion as fact. The latter tends to produce more of an effect among the masses, as people, for better or worse, can be a bit sheepish as times.
The latter also brings me to the statements made by Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh and Paul Shirley, who penned this masterpiece two weeks ago. Each come from different perspectives, Robertson a religious one, Limbaugh political and Shirley a self-righteous, out-of-left-field angle.
Still, they all have one thing in common — ignorance is the root of their arguments.
On one hand, it’s applaudable for pundits like Keith Olberman to call out people with such high standing in certain circles and means to reach the masses but at the same time, it’s not enough. Simply saying someone’s opinion is wrong and and that it brings nothing to the table without enumerating the reasons why ultimately does nothing more than run the risk of alienating a public that is, to a degree, ignorant in its own right.
Now I’m not going as far as to turn this into a “science vs. religion” debate — that’s for another day and mediator — but I am saying that Robertson & Co. are preying on the public’s ignorance when it comes to understanding tectonic plates and seismic pressure.
Robertson clearly ignores centuries of documented earthquakes in the region because, let’s face it, it serves his argument no purpose. At the same time, that’s assuming he was even aware that there were earthquakes before the Haitians made their deal, a notion that cannot be entirely ignored. He is, after all, a religious leader and science doesn’t seem to be high on their list of interesting subjects.
In her Newsweek blog, The Human Condition, Kate Dailey explores some of the history and science surrounding Haiti’s current condition. The time line she presents made me wonder, what, then explains all these other catastrophes Haiti has had to endure?
How do people like Robertson differentiate between “punishment earthquakes” and those that struck the region before this purported “deal with the devil?”
What about other countries or regions, was God also mad at them for some other reason?
(I apologize for not using the “sarcasm font” on the second question.)
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About me
Consider this an electronic name tag, except it tells you more than just my name and doesn’t leave a sticky residue on your shirt.
My name is Phillipe Craig and I am a print journalism major at the University of Houston as well as the sports editor of the Daily Cougar, the university’s official student-run newspaper.
My goal is to explore social issues and how I, as a member of the media, can expand upon the readily available rhetoric on said issues. I hope to do this in a manner that allows for open discussion and encourages feedback from anyone who stumbles across my blog.
Bear with me, as I am getting my footing in the electronic forum as I go.
Enjoy the ride…
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