News Articles

(Alexandria, VA) – State-level data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health [7], the most authoritative study on drug use conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), found significant increases in youth marijuana use in several recently legalized marijuana states versus last year.

“Once again, marijuana is the stubborn outlier – the only drug significantly going up in several areas across the country and across several different age groups,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) [8] and a former senior drug policy advisor to the Obama Administration.

“Weed normalization and commercialization has […]

Bringing about meaningful change in the wake of ‘Cuties’ is going take a lot more effort than just canceling your Netflix account.

By Emma Freire

A massive outcry over indecent content, demands for a legal investigation, calls for boycotts, countless op-eds bemoaning the decline of American morals — no, I’m not talking about the current backlash against the Netflix movie “Cuties.” I am referring to Janet Jackson’s bare breast during the Super Bowl halftime show back in 2004. It was and still is one of the most controversial events in television history.

At the time, I found it strange that the backlash focused […]

• School based comprehensive sex education shows very little effectiveness, a global research review found. 
• The review also found that studies of school based sex education foundincreased sexual activity in some cases.
• This comes as families across the U.S. protest against explicit sex education programs taught in schools.

A global research review of school based comprehensive sex education programs found very little effectiveness from these programs and instead found increased sexual activity.

The review, conducted by the Institute for Research & Evaluation and published in the Issues in Law and Medicine in January, examined 60 studies of […]

Excerpt from The Public Discourse
By Leonard Sax

History has been made. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s latest release, “WAP,” has crushed the previous record for the most streams by a song in its first week after launch. For the week ending August 13, WAP garnered 93 million streams in the USA alone. In addition to claiming the #1 spot on Billboard’s Top 100—where it remains at this writing—WAP has also reached the number 1 spot in 15 foreign markets, […]

By Ron Haskins
Courtesy of Brookings

Policy aimed at promoting economic opportunity for poor children must be framed within three stark realities. First, many poor children come from families that do not give them the kind of support that middle-class children get from their families. Second, as a result, these children enter kindergarten far behind their more advantaged peers and, on average, never catch up and even fall further behind. Third, in addition to the education deficit, poor children are more likely to make bad decisions that lead them to drop out of school, become teen parents, join gangs and […]

Summary by Emerald O’Brien

Emotional grooming is a process by which the perpetrator or “Con” manipulates their target’s emotions to seduce, coerce, or con them into sexual behavior.  They most likely learned their behavior from peers, media, or other adult role models.  Most Cons have never seen or experienced the mutual respect and selfless behaviors it takes to maintain or create a healthy relationship.

Perpetrators of sexual crimes and that is what it is, can be male or female.  They need two things, first to control their victim to create a false sense of trust and second, secrecy.

Sexting among children in the UK has risen dramatically during lockdown, with some girls as young as six composing sexually explicit messages.

SafeToNet, a free phone safety app available via the gov.uk website, said the number of messages children attempted to send had risen by 183 per cent.

The app analyses message content and stops harmful messages from being sent. It also offers guidance as a message is being composed.

Explicit messages

The figures also revealed a 55 per cent rise in the number of ‘sexts’ drafted during normal school hours.

Girls were more likely to try to send explicit messages than boys, and eleven-year-olds […]