Sunday, September 8, 2013
Press release from the Center For Disease Control on 09/05/13:
The findings from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, show that the percentage of high school students who reported ever using an e-cigarette rose from 4.7 percent in 2011 to 10.0 percent in 2012. In the same time period, high school students using e-cigarettes within the past 30 days rose from 1.5 percent to 2.8 percent. Use also doubled among middle school students. Altogether, in 2012 more than 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide had tried e-cigarettes. More than 75 percent of youth users smoke conventional cigarettes too.
Editor's note:
Whether this increased in school age kids using e-cigarettes is good or bad is hard to tell. E-cigarettes can be a form of nicotine replacement for kids trying to quit cigarettes in which case the use of e-cigarettes is a good think for tobacco cessation. On the other hand, if non smoking kids are using e-cigarettes for the nicotine (which I doubt) and they graduate to tobacco, then the use of e-cigarettes is a bad thing. Here in Brockport e-cigarettes are readily available in specialty stores, the drug stores, and Walmart. I do believe you have to be 18 though to purchase them as you do any tobacco products. How strictly the sale of cigarettes is enforced is questionable.
The percentage of U.S. middle and high school students who use electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, more than doubled from 2011 to 2012, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, in today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, show that the percentage of high school students who reported ever using an e-cigarette rose from 4.7 percent in 2011 to 10.0 percent in 2012. In the same time period, high school students using e-cigarettes within the past 30 days rose from 1.5 percent to 2.8 percent. Use also doubled among middle school students. Altogether, in 2012 more than 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide had tried e-cigarettes. More than 75 percent of youth users smoke conventional cigarettes too.
Editor's note:
There are times in life when we feel bereft, in despair, overwhelmed, doomed. We are filled with fear that we are losing, have lost, or about to lose things that are extremely important to us even essential to our continued existence. At first we panic, then perhaps grow furious, and then we implode, surrender, give up and wonder if we can continue living. I have felt this way several times in my life. The biggest times were when my kids were killed and when my marriage ended. I have lived through it with many clients who have lost people, and things very important to them and broke down in the face of terrible existential devastation.
And when one's life is falling apart or has fallen apart where does one turn? How does one cope, if one does and not kill themselves as I have known people to do, with this kind of devastating loss?
We cry.
We drink and drug.
We turned to trusted ones we love for solace.
We turn to faith.
Faith is both a noun and a verb, a process. Faith can be a creed or set of beliefs, and it can also be a way of proceeding in the face of pain and fear. One of my favorite hymns is an old spiritual, "We've come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, Trusting in His holy word. He's never failed me yet."
God will not only walk with us if we ask Him, He will carry us even if we can't walk ourselves if we ask for a break. Mary Stevenson's great poem, Footprints, says in part, "Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me? The Lord replied, 'The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you.'"
In Alcoholic Anonymous, the first step of the twelve step program, is to admit that life sometimes is too much, it is too unmanageable and we have to turn our life over to our Higher Power whatever we conceive our Higher Power to be. Paradoxically, it is in this surrender, that we find our greatest strength and peace.
And when one's life is falling apart or has fallen apart where does one turn? How does one cope, if one does and not kill themselves as I have known people to do, with this kind of devastating loss?
We cry.
We drink and drug.
We turned to trusted ones we love for solace.
We turn to faith.
Faith is both a noun and a verb, a process. Faith can be a creed or set of beliefs, and it can also be a way of proceeding in the face of pain and fear. One of my favorite hymns is an old spiritual, "We've come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, Trusting in His holy word. He's never failed me yet."
God will not only walk with us if we ask Him, He will carry us even if we can't walk ourselves if we ask for a break. Mary Stevenson's great poem, Footprints, says in part, "Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me? The Lord replied, 'The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you.'"
In Alcoholic Anonymous, the first step of the twelve step program, is to admit that life sometimes is too much, it is too unmanageable and we have to turn our life over to our Higher Power whatever we conceive our Higher Power to be. Paradoxically, it is in this surrender, that we find our greatest strength and peace.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on March 29, 2013, signed legislation that increases the New York State minimum wage rate starting Dec. 31, 2013. This is New York’s first minimum wage increase since July 24, 2009, when it was increased to match to federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.
The new legislation provides that the New York minimum wage will increase to:
*$8.00 on and after Dec. 31, 2013.
*$8.75 on and after Dec. 31, 2014.
*$9.00 on and after Dec. 31, 2015.
The new legislation provides that the New York minimum wage will increase to:
*$8.00 on and after Dec. 31, 2013.
*$8.75 on and after Dec. 31, 2014.
*$9.00 on and after Dec. 31, 2015.
SUNY Brockport
Fall 2013 - 50th Season
Unless otherwise noted, all Writers Forum readings begin at 8 pm in the
New York Room, Cooper Hall, on the Brockport campus.
New York Room, Cooper Hall, on the Brockport campus.
Writers Forum events are free and open to the public.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013, 8:00 PM  Traci Brimhall is the author of Rookery and Our Lady of the Ruins, winner of the Barnard Women's Poets Prize, selected by Carolyn Forché. She received the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, New England Review, Ploughshares, and many more. This year, Brimhall received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry. | |
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