The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) announced $89 million in Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program grants to 719 local drug prevention coalitions — including several in Ohio — the largest number of single-year grantees since the program’s founding. Directed by ONDCP, in partnership with SAMHSA, these grants will provide local community coalitions with funding to prevent youth substance use, including prescription drugs, marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. View a list of FY 17 grant award recipients.

A new report titled Special Rules for Small Brewers, Wineries and Distillers by Pamela S. Erickson, is now available at  http://healthyalcoholmarket.com/wordpress/reports   

This report describes how the alcohol supplier landscape has dramatically changed. While the market is still dominated by a few large manufacturers, there are now small breweries, wineries and distillers in every state. And many of these small operators work outside the three-tier regulatory system.

Because changes have come a little at a time, it’s difficult to see any adverse impact. But little thought has been given to the effect on our alcohol regulatory system and the problems this system attempts to curtail. This report describes some of the possible outcomes of this erosion.

Special Rules for Small Brewers, Wineries and Distillers illustrates how loosening the rules for one part of the market could lead to unintended consequences such as internet sales to minors, loss of tax revenue to cash-strapped states and loss of product safety that the three-tier system helps insure.

And in some cases, privileges meant to help small businesses and craft industries are now going to large suppliers. In some states, the burden on enforcement has increased due to different rules for new types of licenses.

Special Rules for Small Brewers, Wineries and Distillers is designed to describe the new supplier arena and examine its impact on our regulatory systems.

To view this short report and others, as well as monthly newsletters and other information on alcohol regulation, see healthyalcoholmarket.com.

Do you know which 10 states have the most craft breweries, wineries and distilleries?  Find out in:  

Special Rules for Small Brewers, Wineries and Distillers.  

Pam Erickson
Public Action Management 
PO Box 531726 | Henderson, NV 89053
503 / 936-0443
healthyalcoholmarket.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Hocking College is the first school to announce it wants to be a state testing laboratory for medical marijuana.

The Southeast Ohio school will apply to test cannabis for safety and potency, which the law will require before sales. Other Ohio public colleges and universities have been hesitant to offer their facilities for testing, concerned they could jeopardize federal funding since marijuana is illegal.

For the rest of the story, go here.

Researchers claim that industry groups worldwide misrepresent the carcinogenicity of alcohol products.

Public communication campaigns by alcohol industry groups mislead the public by not clearly transmitting the cancer risk that comes with imbibing, according to a new study. The authors of the paper, published Thursday (September 7) in Drug and Alcohol Review, considered websites and other documents published by 27 organizations around the world between September and December 2016.

“The weight of scientific evidence is clear—drinking alcohol increases the risk of some of the most common forms of cancer, including several common cancers,” says study coauthor and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine researcher Mark Petticrew, in a statement. “Public awareness of this risk is low, and it has been argued that greater public awareness, particularly of the risk of breast cancer, poses a significant threat to the alcohol industry. Our analysis suggests that the major global alcohol producers may attempt to mitigate this by disseminating misleading information about cancer. . . .”

Petticrew and his coauthors, including scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, identified three main ways that the industry misrepresented the links between alcohol consumption and cancer risk: disputing that such links exist, distorting the size of the associated risk of drinking alcohol, or distracting consumers’ attention away from the independent contributions of alcohol to cancer risk.

The study “clearly shows the alcohol industry misleading the public,” Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, tells Reuters. “With only 1 in 10 people aware of the link between alcohol and cancer, people have both a need and a right to clear information about the health risks of drinking alcohol.”

At least one alcohol industry group shot back at the study’s authors and their findings. “The Council does not recommend that people drink alcohol for potential health benefits,” writes the Distilled Spirits Council, a U.S.-based alcohol trade association, in a statement quoted by Reuters. “Drinking in moderation may pose health risks for some people, and some individuals should not drink at all.” The council also claimed that the study’s authors have “anti-alcohol biases.”

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50294/title/Study–Alcohol-Industry-Distorts-Cancer-Risk/

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Late last year, Manny Delaveris fell into a rut. He couldn’t shake his pessimism or stop worrying. His brain felt dark, all the time. It wasn’t that different from how he felt back when he was still using painkillers and heroin: empty.

Delaveris had been sober for a year following several stints in rehab, and he was on his way to making the dean’s list at Ohio State University. Yet he found himself tuning out at support group meetings and going out back to smoke cigarettes.

Then he ran into a friend he used to get high with.

“I said, ‘Fxxx it. Let’s do it,’” Delaveris, 27, recalled. “I just felt so shitty. And I really thought it was going to be this quick, little, like, I’ll just do this, get it out of my system” — he snapped his fingers — “and get sober again right away. And it just was not that easy.”

For the next six months, Delaveris woke up nearly every day planning to stay sober. But after heading to classes in the morning, he’d find himself unable to think of anything else — until, finally, he would drive off-campus to buy painkillers from an acquaintance, and, because he couldn’t wait, use them on his way home. Then he’d spend the rest of the day in his room alone, watching YouTube videos on astrophysics or listening to One Direction.

For more of this article, click here.

Many years ago I was plagued with debilitating headaches associated with a number of seemingly unrelated activities that included cooking for company and sewing drapes for the house. I thought I might be allergic to natural gas or certain fabrics until one day I realized that I tensed my facial muscles when I concentrated intently on a project.

The cure was surprisingly simple: I became aware of how my body was reacting and changed it through self-induced behavior modification. I consciously relaxed my muscles whenever I focused on a task that could precipitate a tension-induced headache.

Fast-forward about five decades: Now it was my back that ached when I hurriedly cooked even a simple meal. And once again, after months of pain, I realized that I was transferring stress to the muscles of my back and had to learn to relax them, and to allow more time to complete a project to mitigate the stress. Happy to report, I recently prepared dinner for eight with nary a pain.

I don’t mean to suggest that every ache and pain can be cured by self-awareness and changing one’s behavior. But recent research has demonstrated that the mind – along with other nonpharmacological remedies — can be powerful medicine to relieve many kinds of chronic or recurrent pains, especially low back pain.

As Dr. James Campbell, a neurosurgeon and pain specialist, put it, “The best treatment for pain is right under our noses.” He suggests not “catastrophizing” – not assuming that the pain represents something disastrous that keeps you from leading the life you’ve chosen.

To read more on alternatives, click here.

Portman Group and Drinkaware among those accused by academics of obscuring heightened risks of cancer in drinkers

The drinks industry is misleading the public by downplaying and misrepresenting the link between alcohol and cancer – especially breast cancer – in a bid to protect its profits, new research claims.

Alcohol firms and “responsible drinking” bodies they fund are denying that drink causes cancer and distorting the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in information they provide to consumers, according to the British-led team of international experts behind the findings.

Despite portraying themselves as socially responsible, many drinks producers are also trying to distract attention from alcohol’s well-established role as a key cause of cancer, confuse consumers and blame other factors, it is claimed.

Their “denial, distortion, distraction” tactics closely resemble those cigarette companies used to limit exposure of tobacco’s role as a main cause of cancer. They are being deployed in particular on bowel and breast cancer, two of Britain’s most common and most lethal forms of the disease, the academics allege.

For more click here.