Prescription Drug Abuse
There is ample evidence that non-medical use of prescription drugs is a large problem among young people. In the 2007 Monitoring the Future Study (MTFS), 15.4% of 12th graders reported the non-medical use of at least one prescription medication within the last year. In other words, more than 1 in 7 high school seniors are using drugs like Vicodin, Oxycontin, or Aderall to get high. In addition, prescription drug abuse among teens has been growing significantly over the past two decades. In the 2008 MTFS, reported past-year, non-medical use of narcotics other than heroin among 12th graders grew from 3.5% in 1991 to 9.1% in 2008; while non-medical use of tranquilizers (e.g., Xanax) among 12th graders grew from 3.6% in 1991 to 6.2% in 2008.
These trends are problematic because recent research shows that persons who begin using prescription drugs non-medically at an early age are more likely to be diagnosed with lifetime prescription drug abuse and dependence1. Between 2004 and 2008, one in 12 patients admitted to Denver metro emergency rooms for abuse or misuse of prescription opioids were 20 years of age and younger2.
Rates of teen misuse and abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs are likely rising because:
• Prescription and over-the-counter medications are easily accessible: Youth can obtain medications by buying pills from their peers with legitimate prescriptions or stealing from household medicine cabinets
• Some youth have a lower perceived risk of prescription drug use: Since prescription medications do serve a purpose when used and monitored appropriately, teens may not recognize the same risks in abusing prescription drugs as they do in other illicit drugs

Parents and caregivers are instrumental in preventing prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse among youth. As an adult, you can take the following steps to help ensure the youth in your life stay healthy and safe.
• Learn the facts about prescription drug abuse and ways to talk to teens about misusing medications by visiting Parents. The Anti-Drug. or Time to Talk
• Monitor your prescription and over-the-counter medications closely to deter youth from raiding medicine cabinets
• Properly dispose of all unused or expired medications; call the Denver Household Hazardous Waste Program at 720-865-6815 for information and instructions on disposing your old prescription and over-the-counter drugs

Archdiocesan Housing Inc. is proud to announce the opening of a new affordable housing project called Broadway Junction Apartments located at 1165 S. Broadway in Denver. Features Include:

> One bedroom rents from $377 to $662; Two bedrooms/two bath rent from $454 to $797

> Garage parking, free heat, on-site business center, walk in closets, & mountain views

> Walking distance to the Broadway Market light rail and bus station

> Incomes less than $15,950 for one person may qualify at the lowest rental rate and afford a unit without subsidy assistance. (Voucher holders are accepted.)

Contact: 303-777-7900 info@broadwayjunctionapts.com or www.BroadwayJunctionApts.com

Future residents must be income qualified and pass a background check. Please, no pets.

The St. Francis Center is poised to open the building next to their offices at the corner of Park Ave. West and Curtis Street. This development offers forty units of housing to formerly homeless people. The opening is part of a push to create more than 1,500 units of permanent, subsidized housing and supportive services in the City and County of Denver.

"I thought you would like to know that the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless received this letter from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment stating that our Integrated Screening for Chronic Disease Among those who are Homeless Program was terminated immediately due to the recently announced budget cuts. This $199,000 program at Stout Street Clinic has been credited for early detection for many homeless individuals for colon and breast cancer leading to life saving treatment. The letter states in part:

The Review Committee for CCPD has met several times to determine how to make such a large reduction while still maintaining a foundational chronic disease grants program. Simply put, the foundational chronic disease program is a determination of "core programs" for each disease area and the cross cutting area that are deemed to be most important for the scaled back grants program. On Friday, September 11, the committee voted to continue 34projects and discontinue 24 projects for the remainder of this fiscal year based on match with core areas, evidence basis, and ability to measure effectiveness. We regret to inform you that the Integrated Screening for Chronic Disease Among those who are Homeless Program fell outside of the core areas and will be discontinued. You will receive official notification of this action within a few days and will be instructed to stop work on the project.

This is the fourth letter of this type we have received in the past two weeks, totaling more than $2.5 million in funding cuts, retroactive to July 1, 2009. Needless to say it will be a long, sick winter for homeless persons in Colorado."

Such a drastic change affects the lives of countless citizens who will die without being identified with serious medical problems. What this decision says is that the poor have no place in society because they're lives are expendable.

By BARBARA EHRENREICH and DEDRICK MUHAMMAD
Published: September 12, 2009
WHAT do you get when you combine the worst economic downturn since the Depression with the first black president? A surge of white racial resentment, loosely disguised as a populist revolt. An article on the Fox News Web site has put forth the theory that health reform is a stealth version of reparations for slavery: whites will foot the bill and, by some undisclosed mechanism, blacks will get all the care. President Obama, in such fantasies, is a dictator and, in one image circulated among the anti-tax, anti-health reform “tea parties,” he is depicted as a befeathered African witch doctor with little tusks coming out of his nostrils. When you’re going down, as the white middle class has been doing for several years now, it’s all too easy to imagine that it’s because someone else is climbing up over your back.

Related
Op-Ed Contributor: Too Poor to Make the News (June 14, 2009)
Op-Ed Contributor: A Homespun Safety Net (July 12, 2009)
Op-Ed Contributor: Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? (August 9, 2009)
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Heads of State
Despite the sense of white grievance, though, blacks are the ones who are taking the brunt of the recession, with disproportionately high levels of foreclosures and unemployment. And they weren’t doing so well to begin with. At the start of the recession, 33 percent of the black middle class was already in danger of falling to a lower economic level, according to a study by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University and Demos, a nonpartisan public policy research organization.
In fact, you could say that for African-Americans the recession is over. It occurred from 2000 to 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During those seven years, one-third of black children lived in poverty, and black unemployment — even among college graduates — consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment.
That was the black recession. What’s happening now is more like a depression. Nauvata and James, a middle-aged African American couple living in Prince Georges County, Md., who asked that their last name not be published, had never recovered from the first recession of the ’00s when the second one came along. In 2003 Nauvata was laid off from a $25-an-hour administrative job at Aetna, and in 2007 she wound up in $10.50-an-hour job at a car rental company. James has had a steady union job as a building equipment operator, but the two couldn’t earn enough to save themselves from predatory lending schemes.
They were paying off a $524 dining set bought on credit from the furniture store Levitz when it went out of business, and their debt swelled inexplicably as it was sold from one creditor to another. The couple ultimately spent a total of $3,800 to both pay it off and hire a lawyer to clear their credit rating. But to do this they had to refinance their home — not once, but with a series of mortgage lenders. Now they face foreclosure.
Nauvata, who is 47, has since seen her blood pressure soar, and James, 56, has developed heart palpitations. “There is no middle class anymore,” he told us, “just a top and a bottom.”
Plenty of formerly middle- or working-class whites have followed similar paths to ruin: the layoff or reduced hours, the credit traps and ever-rising debts, the lost home. But one thing distinguishes hard-pressed African-Americans as a group: Thanks to a legacy of a discrimination in both hiring and lending, they’re less likely than whites to be cushioned against the blows by wealthy relatives or well-stocked savings accounts. In 2008, on the cusp of the recession, the typical African-American family had only a dime for every dollar of wealth possessed by the typical white family. Only 18 percent of blacks and Latinos had retirement accounts, compared with 43.4 percent of whites.
Racial asymmetry was stamped on this recession from the beginning. Wall Street’s reckless infatuation with subprime mortgages led to the global financial crash of 2007, which depleted home values and 401(k)’s across the racial spectrum. People of all races got sucked into subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, but even high-income blacks were almost twice as likely to end up with subprime home-purchase loans as low-income whites — even when they qualified for prime mortgages, even when they offered down payments.
According to a 2008 report by United for a Fair Economy, a research and advocacy group, from 1998 to 2006 (before the subprime crisis), blacks lost $71 billion to $93 billion in home-value wealth from subprime loans. The researchers called this family net-worth catastrophe the “greatest loss of wealth in recent history for people of color.” And the worst was yet to come.
(Page 2 of 3)
In a new documentary film about the subprime crisis, “American Casino,” solid black citizens — a high school social studies teacher, a psychotherapist, a minister — relate how they lost their homes when their monthly mortgage payments exploded. Watching the parts of the film set in Baltimore is a little like watching the TV series “The Wire,” except that the bad guys don’t live in the projects; they hover over computer screens on Wall Street.

It’s not easy to get people to talk about their subprime experiences. There’s the humiliation of having been “played” by distant, mysterious forces. “I don’t feel very good about myself,” says the teacher in “American Casino.” “I kind of feel like a failure.”
Even people who know better tend to blame themselves — like Melonie Griffith, a 40-year-old African-American who works with the Boston group City Life/La Vida Urbana helping other people avoid foreclosure and eviction. She criticizes herself for having been “naïve” enough to trust the mortgage lender who, in 2004, told her not to worry about the high monthly payments she was signing on for because the mortgage would be refinanced in “a couple of months.” The lender then disappeared, leaving Ms. Griffith in foreclosure, with “nowhere for my kids and me to go.” Only when she went public with her story did she find that she wasn’t the only one. “There is a consistent pattern here,” she told us.
Mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Wells Fargo sought out minority homebuyers for the heartbreakingly simple reason that, for decades, blacks had been denied mortgages on racial grounds, and were thus a ready-made market for the gonzo mortgage products of the mid-’00s. Banks replaced the old racist practice of redlining with “reverse redlining” — intensive marketing aimed at black neighborhoods in the name of extending home ownership to the historically excluded. Countrywide, which prided itself on being a dream factory for previously disadvantaged homebuyers, rolled out commercials showing canny black women talking their husbands into signing mortgages.
At Wells Fargo, Elizabeth Jacobson, a former loan officer at the company, recently revealed — in an affidavit in a lawsuit by the City of Baltimore — that salesmen were encouraged to try to persuade black preachers to hold “wealth-building seminars” in their churches. For every loan that resulted from these seminars, whether to buy a new home or refinance one, Wells Fargo promised to donate $350 to the customer’s favorite charity, usually the church. (Wells Fargo denied any effort to market subprime loans specifically to blacks.) Another former loan officer, Tony Paschal, reported that at the same time cynicism was rampant within Wells Fargo, with some employees referring to subprimes as “ghetto loans” and to minority customers as “mud people.”
If any cultural factor predisposed blacks to fall for risky loans, it was one widely shared with whites — a penchant for “positive thinking” and unwarranted optimism, which takes the theological form of the “prosperity gospel.” Since “God wants to prosper you,” all you have to do to get something is “name it and claim it.” A 2000 DVD from the black evangelist Creflo Dollar featured African-American parishioners shouting, “I want my stuff — right now!”
Joel Osteen, the white megachurch pastor who draws 40,000 worshippers each Sunday, about two-thirds of them black and Latino, likes to relate how he himself succumbed to God’s urgings — conveyed by his wife — to upgrade to a larger house. According to Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, pastors like Mr. Osteen reassured people about subprime mortgages by getting them to believe that “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and bless me with my first house.” If African-Americans made any collective mistake in the mid-’00s, it was to embrace white culture too enthusiastically, and substitute the individual wish-fulfillment promoted by Norman Vincent Peale for the collective-action message of Martin Luther King.
(Page 3 of 3)
But you didn’t need a dodgy mortgage to be wiped out by the subprime crisis and ensuing recession. Black unemployment is now at 15.1 percent, compared with 8.9 percent for whites. In New York City, black unemployment has been rising four times as fast as that of whites. By 2010, according to Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, 40 percent of African-Americans nationwide will have endured patches of unemployment or underemployment.

One result is that blacks are being hit by a second wave of foreclosures caused by unemployment. Willett Thomas, a neat, wiry 47-year-old in Washington who describes herself as a “fiscal conservative,” told us that until a year ago she thought she’d “figured out a way to live my dream.” Not only did she have a job and a house, but she had a rental property in Gainesville, Fla., leaving her with the flexibility to pursue a part-time writing career.
Then she became ill, lost her job and fell behind on the fixed-rate mortgage on her home. The tenants in Florida had financial problems of their own and stopped paying rent. Now, although she manages to have an interview a week and regularly upgrades her résumé, Ms. Thomas cannot find a new job. The house she lives in is in foreclosure.
Mulugeta Yimer of Alexandria, Va., still has his taxi-driving job, but it no longer pays enough to live on. A thin, tall man with worry written all over his face, Mr. Yimer came to this country in 1981 as a refugee from Ethiopia, firmly believing in the American dream. In 2003, when Wells Fargo offered him an adjustable-rate mortgage, he calculated that he’d be able to deal with the higher interest rate when it kicked in. But the recession delivered a near-mortal blow to the taxi industry, even in the still relatively affluent Washington suburbs. He’s now putting in 19-hour days, with occasional naps in his taxi, while his wife works 32 hours a week at a convenience store, but they still don’t earn enough to cover expenses: $400 a month for health insurance, $800 for child care and $1,700 for the mortgage. What will Mr. Yimer do if he ends up losing his house? “We’ll go to a shelter, I guess,” he said, throwing open his hands, “if we can find one.”
So despite the right-wing perception of black power grabs, this recession is on track to leave blacks even more economically disadvantaged than they were. Does a black president who is inclined toward bipartisanship dare address this destruction of the black middle class? Probably not. But if Americans of all races don’t get some economic relief soon, the pain will only increase and with it, perversely, the unfounded sense of white racial grievance.

Randle Loeb's entries have been selected to be part of the 2009 Visions of Peace Exhibit:
"The Space Between the Stars"

Please join us at the Visions of Peace Reception:
Sept. 20th from 2-4 pm
Art Students League of Denver, 200 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80203

The 2009 VOP Reception will honor the artists, poets and musicians whose work is included in the Visions of Peace Cyber Art Gallery. Please invite your friends and family to the reception.

Poets & Musicians will read their poetry and perform their music at 2 Visions of Peace Events during October: October 2nd from 7-9 (Walker Gallery, 300 W 11th Ave, Denver) and October 18th at 5:30 (Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St, Denver)

Congratulations, Randle!

My Private Life With A Private Guide
By Kelli Wilson
(9/3/09)

It is always important to understand what you’re doing when you’re working for a company. Right? I mean you wouldn’t take a job at an isogonics freezing laboratory if you were a Shakespearian History lecturer.

I came into A Private Guide, Inc. with a big smile and blank face! It’s difficult when it comes to internships because you never know exactly what you will be doing until you are doing it.

I knew what A Private Guide, Inc. was, but I didn’t know exactly how they did what it is they do, and I wasn’t even entirely sure what I would be doing. Well after two weeks on the job, I have not only learned a whole lot of information that will not only get me through this internship with them and also through real life, but I have also learned all about how to get myself “out there” and network.

Networking is the number one thing in this industry. That might be the only thing I heard in school and then also heard from Daphne (since nothing else I have learned in college seems to be helping me in the real job world…hmm...). I have had the opportunity to tour the incredible Kirkland Museum and even meet Hugh Grant, the director and personal friend of Vance Kirkland. I was able to sit in on meetings regarding the future of our great city. Of course by future I mean events future, not political or physical future!

It is amazing to me that I am finally feeling like I am doing something every day that effects others in so many ways. A Private Guide, Inc. has so much to teach me and so much for me to do, I feel as though my life journey is finally beginning.

-Kelli Wilson, Intern
A Private Guide, Inc.

Looking back nostalgically times were better for most people who were privileged in another lifetime. The horrors of nuclear war had been laid out clearly and people had bomb shelters, evacuation plans and rations. Some people were influenced by the confrontation of the Soviet empire and the NATO allies, but most people went about their business as though nothing ever changed. People who had been born to a world of opportunity and wealth felt safe from the distractions of the violence that engulfed many cities and the quality of life of people throughout the world.

Today is the ninth anniversary of the modern day threat to everyone who felt protected. Almost ten years later the earth still trembles under the weight of the threat of violence and the actual destruction that threatens people everywhere. The quality of life of everyone has deteriorated except for a remote splinter who live in isolation or extreme wealth and privilege. The threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon or Libya, or North Korea, or Pakistan is a small element of this perspective.

For years and years America acted as a deterrent to any effort to destroy our way of life for the privileged few. In the era of the 1960’s the streets were burning and children were denied access to school. In this century children are denied access to education because the costs are prohibitive and the health of people is in jeopardy. The environment is crumbling as well but that impact is not felt as much because it is hard to discern precisely. Wild fires are once again burning out of control especially in the western United States.

Yet, the people with plans and decisive efforts to go on living above and beyond what earth can sustain have been continuing without regard to the quality of life of three quarters of the world, who have never lived with any assurance that they would survive. There is no place on earth that is not affected by the ravages of violence and the intent to denude the planet of all life.

In 2010 there are two significant events that are matching people throughout he world. On one hand be are holding right here a seven week biennial celebration of cultural arts and the 200 year anniversaries of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. The themes for the biennial are related to technology and world economy, education, health, energy, environment, philanthropy, and transportation. The impact of this event will be that those who are privileged economically can continue to prosper. However, the other side of the coin is that the remittances that families send to their loved ones at home, mostly women will go towards the infrastructure and the economies of these undeveloped areas while exploiting the economy and life of the poorer neighbors, most of whom will lose their precious mothers. In some ways the juxtaposition of these realities is like a harlequin drama, whereby the actors are choking to death the world and the peasants. Hoe are we to rectify this age old discrepancy between wealth and privilege without asphyxiating and annihilating the world?

The wife of the mayor is about to publish a book following four immigrants and their successes as they age and become assimilated in the privilege of wealth and power. The truth is that power is not wielded equally and when a person is pushed up against a wall, before dying he lashes out at his captor. “The Wretched of the Earth,” a gross depiction of this violence against humanity was written by a French psychologist about the vagaries of control and wealth being used to destroy people and cultures. We are living in this perpetual myth that everyone is living in luxury. The truth is that people never were treated as equals anywhere on earth.

Looking back nostalgically times were better for most people who were privileged in another lifetime. The horrors of nuclear war had been laid out clearly and people had bomb shelters, evacuation plans and rations. Some people were influenced by the confrontation of the Soviet empire and the NATO allies, but most people went about their business as though nothing ever changed. People who had been born to a world of opportunity and wealth felt safe from the distractions of the violence that engulfed many cities and the quality of life of people throughout the world.

Today is the ninth anniversary of the modern day threat to everyone who felt protected. Almost ten years later the earth still trembles under the weight of the threat of violence and the actual destruction that threatens people everywhere. The quality of life of everyone has deteriorated except for a remote splinter who live in isolation or extreme wealth and privilege. The threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon or Libya, or North Korea, or Pakistan is a small element of this perspective.

For years and years America acted as a deterrent to any effort to destroy our way of life for the privileged few. In the era of the 1960’s the streets were burning and children were denied access to school. In this century children are denied access to education because the costs are prohibitive and the health of people is in jeopardy. The environment is crumbling as well but that impact is not felt as much because it is hard to discern precisely. Wild fires are once again burning out of control especially in the western United States.

Yet, the people with plans and decisive efforts to go on living above and beyond what earth can sustain have been continuing without regard to the quality of life of three quarters of the world, who have never lived with any assurance that they would survive. There is no place on earth that is not affected by the ravages of violence and the intent to denude the planet of all life.

In 2010 there are two significant events that are matching people throughout he world. On one hand be are holding right here a seven week biennial celebration of cultural arts and the 200 year anniversaries of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia. The themes for the biennial are related to technology and world economy, education, health, energy, environment, philanthropy, and transportation. The impact of this event will be that those who are privileged economically can continue to prosper. However, the other side of the coin is that the remittances that families send to their loved ones at home, mostly women will go towards the infrastructure and the economies of these undeveloped areas while exploiting the economy and life of the poorer neighbors, most of whom will lose their precious mothers. In some ways the juxtaposition of these realities is like a harlequin drama, whereby the actors are choking to death the world and the peasants. Hoe are we to rectify this age old discrepancy between wealth and privilege without asphyxiating and annihilating the world?

The wife of the mayor is about to publish a book following four immigrants and their successes as they age and become assimilated in the privilege of wealth and power. The truth is that power is not wielded equally and when a person is pushed up against a wall, before dying he lashes out at his captor. “The Wretched of the Earth,” a gross depiction of this violence against humanity was written by a French psychologist about the vagaries of control and wealth being used to destroy people and cultures. We are living in this perpetual myth that everyone is living in luxury. The truth is that people never were treated as equals anywhere on earth.