A new study released by the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy shows a dramatic increase in heroin using among young white women, especially those living in the Chicago suburbs. Despite a 16 percent drop in heroin related deaths overall since 2000, deaths among white women under the age of 35 have increased by 40 percent. Heroin has become so popular that it is now the second most common drug people seek rehab treatment for, after alcohol. The report makes it clear that the face of heroin use has shifted from older, black users in the inner city to young white women in the city’s famously wealthy suburbs.

While women’s drug use has often been ignored, it is clear that it represents just as much of a problem as that of male users (if not more, as women make up a majority of the population). The media typically equates drug use with urban blacks, involved in gangs and prostitution, while often making white people out to be model citizens who want to strictly enforce the “War on Drugs.” If the media does broach …

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Alcohol use is a rite of passage in America that generally happens before that magical age of 21.  However, there is an increasing trend in alcohol abuse among young women that is quite distressing.

Some dangerous numbers from Medicine Net:

About half of junior high and senior high school students drink alcohol on a monthly basis, and 14% of teens have been intoxicated at least once in the past year. Nearly 8% of teens who drink say they drink at least five or more alcoholic drinks in a row (binge drink).

Those are some truly frightening numbers.  I’ve been thinking a lot about this (as the mother of an adolescent and as a secondary school teacher, I guess it would be hard not to), and a part of my me wants to say, “Yeah, when I was in high school, everybody drank.  It’s not like it’s a new phenomenon.”  The absolute truth is, I didn’t drink when I was in high school (exposure to alcoholism gave me a moral base for this … of course, college was a different story); however, I was sort of the master designated driver, so I saw various friends in some pretty ridiculous states.  However, what I am sticking on is the 5+ drinks in a row, which I don’t think was the norm back in the ’90s–binge drinking is by all accounts on the increase, and this is something to be very concerned about.

From NewScientist:

Post-mortems of binge-drinking adolescent monkeys have produced the best evidence yet that heavy drinking at an early age can do lasting damage to the brain.

The worst damage was to stem cells destined to become neurons in the hippocampus, the brain area responsible for memory and spatial awareness.

Monkey and human brains develop in the same way, so the finding suggests that similar effects may occur in human teenagers. It thus reinforces the rationale for anti-alcohol policies in the US and elsewhere which aim to raise the age at with people start to drink.

Perhaps most frightening is the increase in alcohol abuse by adolescent girls. 
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According to a recent article in American Thinker, there is a left-wing message that Americans in general—and conservatives in particular—are … well, dumb. And that Sarah Palin isn’t. And that Woody Allen is a political commentator to be taken seriously.

Stupidity is the face of American exceptionalism for Barack Obama and his media and university supporters. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a graduate of the elite University of Chicago, says the nation’s a “joke,” that Sarah Palin and ordinary Americans should shut up and let the “educated class” lead. Bill Maher, who practices his contempt at HBO and honed his arrogance at Yale, labels us a “stupid people.”

Meanwhile, Woody Allen says we are so clueless that Barack Obama needs to take his Harvard law degree in hand and become a “dictator for a few years.” Allen, who does not have an Ivy League degree, nevertheless burnished his elite cultural credentials with first an affair, and then a marriage to his stepdaughter a few years back. More recently, he dismissed the rape of a fourteen-year-old by fugitive director Roman Polanski with the observation “he’s an artist.”

Uh … it speaks volumes about your argument that you’re giving credence to Woody Allen’s word on politics. Is that the best example you can come up with, Stuart Schwartz of American Thinker?

They are angry that 81% of us put the nation “on the wrong track” and that two-thirds are “outraged” with what the “educated class” is doing to us. Their response, however, is pushback. The Atlantic magazine, a favorite of our political and media elites, just this month explained the growing anger on Main Street: “It’s that you’re stupid.”

Yeah, those numbers seemed a little funky to me, so I went to the link referenced by Schwartz’s article. It’s from an April 2008 CBS poll report essentially focusing on whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic candidate to go up against John McCain. Um, yeah …
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There has been both concern and discussion in the border state of Arizona as Republican Governor Jan Brewer tries to balance numerous issues. Oh, and she, uh, does not exactly see eye-to-eye with the Obama administration.

Brewer has been a member of both the Arizona House of Representatives and the State Senate. She also served as Secretary of State from 2002-2009 before becoming Governor following Janet Napolitano’s acceptance of the Director of Homeland Security position.

Key issues for Brewer include border security, gun policies, healthcare, and gay rights (or, uh, lack thereof). Brewer is obviously a motivated, dedicated, accomplished, and … uh, opinionated public servant to the people of Arizona. This has created a feeling of unsettledness to Arizonians.

Brewer has had some rather pointed words for President Obama. She stated, “No one in Arizona is laughing,” following comments made by the President (she refers to him as the “Comic in Chief”) at the White House Correspondents dinner, and her website reads:

In December 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said that Mexican gangs are the “biggest organized crime threat to the United States.” In 2009, Phoenix had 316 kidnapping cases, turning the city into our nation’s kidnapping capital. Almost all of the persons kidnapped were illegal immigrants or linked to the drug trade.

“The very same week that Governor Brewer signed SB 1070, a major drug ring was broken up and Mexican cartel operatives suspected of running 40,000 pounds of marijuana through southern Arizona were indicted. A week later, a local deputy sheriff was assaulted by suspected drug smugglers carrying an automatic weapon,” said campaign spokesman Doug Cole. “The drug trafficking and border violence is out of control in Arizona and demands serious attention. President Obama and Congress ignored several requests from Governor Brewer for help in securing the border.”

Brewer’s recent victory, Proposition 100, is legislation requiring an extra one cent sales tax increase that is expected to generate $1 billion.

From AZCapitol Times:

A year ago, Jan Brewer’s proposed sales tax hike seemed like a goner and her political career didn’t seem far behind, but after voters cast their ballots for Proposition 100, the landslide victory may be enough to carry her to a full term as governor.

Voters approved Prop. 100 by a 64-36 margin, handing Brewer what many observers view as a knockout punch against her challengers in the Republican primary and the general election.

The victory party by the Yes on 100 committee wasn’t a celebration for the governor per se, but the sea of red ‘Brewer for governor’ shirts in the crowd was an unmistakable reminder that Brewer and Prop. 100 are essentially one and the same.

There have been, however, some specific concerns regarding this legislation. Just two examples:

Arizona resident Lupita Majalca stated to the Arizona Republic that she was torn about the sales tax question, because her Douglas, Arizona business, a refrigerator and cake supplies store, would lose money if the sales tax increases and if she keeps her prices the same.

According to a report by The Explorer News, if the proposition failed, the Arizona Department of Corrections would cut $63 million from its budget and would send thousands of inmates from state prisons to county jails. The reason for such action would minimize the state’s budget deficit.

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A new study by the National Survey of Drug Use and Health states that women who abuse substances prior to childbirth and pregnancy, even if they avoid it at all costs during pregnancy, often fall back into their old ways after the birth of their child.  Within three months.

The same study shows that one in eight women still consume alcohol while pregnant.

The new information relates that thirty-one percent of women surveyed resumed their practices of drinking, smoking or drug use after pregnancy.  According to Peter Delany, head of Applied Sciences in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who conducted the study, states that the issue:

“is that having children creates a protective factor so that women may not be going back to drug use.”

Yet, thirty-one percent of women surveyed did, in fact, go back to their sometimes-detrimental pre-childbirth behavior.

The study itself could be a double-edged sword.  It’s one thing if a woman who was a meth head or a coke head prior to pregnancy and resumed after giving birth to her child; it’s an entirely different hue of horse if the woman goes back to smoking cigarettes or having the occasional glass of wine, or even a raucous night out on the town every once in a great while.  I found out I was pregnant at age twenty-three.  I was living with my fiance, and at the time, we had the date set for our wedding and all of the plans were in motion for the following fall.  However, my daughter, who impetuously from conception insisted that it was going to be her way or the highway, came into the picture a few years ahead of schedule.  That is neither here nor there; she is a blessing and whether she came when she did or five years from now would make no difference.  My husband and I were ready for her from the get-go and prepared in every way that we knew best.

I used to be a lead singer of a local cover band and traveled the Tri-State (Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey) area for over three years playing gigs and partying on a nightly basis.  Even after I met my husband-to-be, I continued my journey with the band, despite his worry.  Up until the winter preceding the conception bombshell, my band days continued.  Christmas of that particular year arrived and I decided to do a little soul-searching.  I decided to leave the band, after almost four years of good times and concentrate more on my life ahead with my then-fiance.  Almost like clockwork, I became pregnant, even while on The Pill.  Like I said, this little girl was having her way one way or another.  Nothing could stop her then and sure as shit, nothing can stop her now.  I found out I was pregnant in March of 2007 and gave birth to a lovely little lady that following November.

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Chicago has some mean streets.  So mean, in fact, that its own prostitutes are afraid and almost unwilling to commence their services lately.  Cook County, which encompasses inter-city Chicago and its outlying areas, has begun the process of implementing “hooker rehabilitation” through its Social Services department.  The program, set up through the sheriff’s prostitution intervention team, provides prostitutes with stable living quarters (much like a halfway house), training and encouragement to begin making a respectable living and the support necessary to encourage reintroduction back into the community.

The intervention team — which includes a former prostitute and drug addict — is fighting an uphill battle against the one-two punch of drug addiction and poverty. In its first test as part of a prostitution roundup in November, only one of eight women picked up agreed to join the program. She still attends weekly meetings with staff, is getting help with child care and has re-enrolled in college. But many women — even the ones who admit they’re tired of life on the street — decline the help. One woman the team spoke to said she wasn’t ready yet — she and her girlfriend have a hotel room paid up for the week, and she doesn’t want to get clean without her friend.

Cook County jail, located in Chicago, reports the statistic that forty percent of women in that particular area who are jailed have served as a prostitute at one point in their lives.

Most of the women that participated in the study and interviews stated that they “never really felt their lives were worth much,” anyway.

I think that this program is a positive step toward recovery for a lot of women.  Recovery from a lot of things, debilitating self-esteem issues and drug addiction, just to name two of the main issues.

Prostitution, a “profession” going back to the ancients, is legal in every country except the United States (certain areas of Nevada being an exception), India, Argentina and some Muslim and Communist countries.  Other countries in the world find that it is a necessary occupation, being that it is sex between two consenting adults: services rendered, services paid.  The attitude of the countries that condone prostitution claim that it doesn’t harm anyone.

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