The San Francisco Chronicle reports on Oakland’s first chief of violence prevention, Guillermo Cespedes: “Oakland had a lofty goal when the City Council created the Department of Violence Prevention in 2017: Reduce homicides by 80% over three years. But as an extensive national search delayed the hiring of a department head, violent crime in Oakland crept back upward. After celebrating a historic violent crime reduction in 2018, 2019 closed with a 7% increase in combined homicides, aggravated assaults, rapes and robberies. City officials hope Guillermo Cespedes can help reverse this course. An anti-violence expert, Cespedes started serving as Oakland’s first permanent chief of violence prevention in September. His job is to work to cut violence through a public health approach… In the future, Cespedes said he could envision a program in Oakland similar to one he inspired in Los Angeles called Summer Night Lights. After finding that violence spiked on certain nights from July 4 to Labor Day weekend, Cespedes’ team dedicated the program to those times specifically. Neighbors were encouraged to declare a recreational center as a cease-fire zone, and it would be open for extended hours and offer free food, activities and other resources. “Gang members would in fact be encouraged to be at the park, so everybody would participate,” Cespedes said. Cespedes’ original program built the framework for an initiative that still operates in 32 sites, and was credited with a 57% reduction in gang-related homicides within two years. Cespedes views his first few months on the payroll as his information-gathering stage and plans to present his first report to council members Jan. 14.”
The New York Times reports on the crisis of missing and murdered Native American women and girls, and the lack of support for women and girls who resurface after experiencing abuse, sex trafficking, trauma, substance use, and other hardships. ““There’s nothing for what comes after,” said Ms. Jones, 48, who has five daughters. “How do you heal? How do you put your family back together? The one thing I’ve found is there’s no support.”Indigenous activists say that generations of killings and disappearances have been disregarded by law enforcement and lost in bureaucratic gaps concerning which local or federal agencies should investigate. There is not even a reliable count of how many Native women go missing or are killed each year. Researchers have found that women are often misclassified as Hispanic or Asian or other racial categories on missing-persons forms and that thousands have been left off a federal missing-persons database. From state capitals to tribal councils to the White House, a grass-roots movement led by activists and victims’ families is casting a national spotlight on the disproportionately high rates of violence faced by Indigenous women and girls… Activists describe the crisis as a legacy of generations of government policies of forced removal, land seizures and violence inflicted on Indigenous people. Hundreds of the missing never return, and families said they have struggled to find counseling and treatment for those who do. Some are trying to cope with the trauma of being trafficked. Some are confronting addiction or grappling with violence they suffered on the streets. Some had fled abuse at home and do not have a safe place to welcome them back.”
New research published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that teenage boys with more progressive views about gender roles are half as likely to engage in violent behaviors as peers with more rigid views about masculinity. “Although previous studies have shown a connection between holding rigid views about gender and masculinity and intimate partner violence, the new study sheds light on a trickle-down effect that those views might have on other forms of violence. "We have for too long siloed sexual and partner violence in one place, youth violence and bullying in another," said Dr. Elizabeth Miller, lead author of the study and chief of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.”
The Trump administration introduced drastic changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, a 50-year-old law that requires construction projects that will have a significant impact on the environment to undergo an environmental impact review. The administration’s proposed changes would exempt many construction projects from this review and impose tight time constraints on the environmental impact review process. A 60-day public comment window will open once the proposed changes are published in the federal register. The New York Times reports that “legal scholars and environmental groups, which are almost certain to sue to block the changes, said the proposals threatened to undermine the safety of communities by letting agencies ignore how rising sea levels might affect a given project as well as the consequences of higher emissions on the atmosphere. Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University, said he did not believe the changes would hold up in court. The Environmental Policy Act requires that all the environmental consequences of a project be taken into account, he said, and that core requirement cannot be changed by fiat. “A regulation can’t change the requirements of a statute as interpreted by the courts,” Mr. Revesz said. In fact, he argued, it is more likely that federal agencies will be sued for inadequate reviews, “thereby leading to far longer delays than if they had done a proper analysis in the first place.””
Vox reports on rising overdose deaths linked to stimulants like meth and cocaine. “Experts worry that the numbers for stimulants could foreshadow a larger epidemic — a potential “fourth wave” in the overdose crisis that’s killed more than 700,000 people in the US since 1999. “Every opioid epidemic in American history has been followed by a stimulant epidemic,” Stanford drug policy expert Keith Humphreys told me. The numbers for meth and cocaine are still dwarfed by opioids. In 2018, there were more than 13,000 estimated overdose deaths linked to stimulants, particularly meth, and more than 15,700 linked to cocaine, according to the provisional data. Meanwhile, there were nearly 48,000 overdose deaths linked to opioids. Synthetic opioids excluding methadone — a category that mainly captures fentanyl — were associated with more than double the fatal overdoses linked to cocaine or meth alone. (There’s some overlap between drugs in the figures, because overdoses can involve multiple drugs.) But there are reasons to believe the crisis is broader than just opioids. A 2018 study in Science found that, while drug overdose deaths spiked in the 1990s and 2000s with the opioid epidemic, there has been “exponential growth” in overdose deaths since 1979. That suggests that America’s drug problem is getting worse in general, regardless of which drug is involved. “My question: Why are we as a country vulnerable to all of these drugs?” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told me. “What has happened that has made it possible for these drugs to take hold in a dramatic way?”
New research published in Nature Sustainability estimates that 26,610 lives were saved between 2005 and 2016 in the US due to a shift from coal-generated electricity to gas. “The shutdown of scores of coal power facilities across the US has reduced the toxic brew of pollutants suffered by nearby communities, cutting deaths from associated health problems such as heart disease and respiratory issues, the research found… “When you turn coal units off you see deaths go down. It’s something we can see in a tangible way,” said Jennifer Burney, a University of California academic who authored the study. “There is a cost to coal beyond the economics. We have to think carefully about where plants are sited, as well as how to reduce their pollutants.” … “Particulate pollution from coal still kills thousands of Americans yearly and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide,” said Rob Jackson, a climate and environment expert at Stanford University who wasn’t involved in the study. “Rolling back emissions standards won’t just harm the climate, it will kill people, especially poorer people more likely to live near coal-fired power plants.”
Food and Drug Administration issued a temporary ban on the manufacture, distribution, and sale of fruit and mint-flavored vaping cartridges (excluding tobacco and menthol). The Washington Post reports that “the deadline was announced as the Trump administration officially unveiled its long-debated vaping policy. Its approach targets disposable pods that have soared in popularity among young people and are sold in tens of thousands of convenience stores across the country. But it excludes menthol- and tobacco-flavored cartridges and exempts e-liquids and devices used in open-tank systems, which typically are sold in vape shops that cater to adults but also can be purchased elsewhere. The policy is a partial retreat from President Trump’s Sept. 11 plan, which would have “swept the market” of all flavors, except tobacco, that are used in all types of vaping products. That comprehensive ban set off intense lobbying by vape shops and vaping advocates, which ultimately led Trump to backtrack… Products removed from the market next month could go back on sale at some point. Under a court-ordered deadline, marketing applications for all e-cigarette products must be submitted to the FDA by May 12. To date, e-cigarettes have not needed the FDA’s sign-off to be on the market; they instead have been sold under “enforcement discretion” followed by the agency.” Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb has said that he thinks Juul should be pulled off the market entirely due to its role in addicting teens.
A new report published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology tracks daily racial discrimination experienced by Black teens.“The researchers surveyed a large group of Black youth between ages 13 and 17 from predominantly Black neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., each day for two weeks about their experiences with racial discrimination and measured changes in their depressive symptoms across that period. The teens reported an average of more than five experiences per day. The experiences reported in the study, which ranged from teasing about physical appearance to overt discrimination, mainly occurred online and led to short-term increases in depressive symptoms. Examples of discrimination included teasing by peers about wearing their hair natural, seeing jokes about their race online and witnessing a family member or friend being treated poorly due to their race or ethnicity. “Racial teasing is important because it is one of the most common ways adolescents communicate about race,” Dr. [Devin] English noted. “Critically, young people and adults, such as teachers, often see this teasing as harmless and choose not to address it. Knowing this, people in positions of power such as clinicians, school administrators, and policymakers have a responsibility to consider discrimination as a critical aspect of the daily experience and health of Black teens. Racial discrimination prevention should be a public health imperative.”
Kansas City, Missouri, is suing Nevada-based gun manufacturer Jimenez Arms for conspiracy to traffic handguns. “With city leaders scrambling to combat high levels of gun violence, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is dusting off an old legal tactic: suing the gun industry. Such lawsuits were relatively common in the 1980s and 1990s, until Congress passed a law in 2005 that largely curtailed the tactic. Speaking Tuesday at a news conference at City Hall, Lucas said the case represents the first municipal lawsuit filed against a gun manufacturer in more than a decade. Nonetheless, he said the city’s argument stands on “very strong legal footing." The lawsuit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court with help from the gun control group Everytown For Gun Safety, alleges that Nevada-based Jimenez Arms was involved in a conspiracy to traffic handguns in Kansas City… Municipalities rarely sue the gun industry thanks in large part to a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act… But one legal theory called negligent entrustment has found success in recent years. The idea is that a gun store can be held liable if it sells a weapon to a person it knows is likely to use the weapon illegally. Kansas City’s lawsuit alleges the three area gun dealers did exactly that — and so did Jimenez Arms… In addition to negligent entrustment, the lawsuit alleges Jimenez and other defendants created a “public nuisance” by fostering an illegal market for firearms that caused the city and its residents “harm and substantial costs.””