By MAANVI SINGH, NPR

Colorado’s new campaign to deter teen marijuana use tries to make the case that weed is bad for your brain.

Colorado’s “don’t be a lab rat” campaign tries to make the point that we don’t know what marijuana does to the teenage brain. (NPR)

One TV ad shows a group of teens lighting up inside a dark car as moody music plays in the background. The commercial cites a Duke University study that found a link between regular marijuana use and a lower IQ.

“Some dispute the study,” the PSA admits. “But what if years from now you learn those scientists were right?” The kicker comes as the scene fades to black: “Don’t be a lab rat.”

The campaign, which launched last month, is designed to target kids in the 12 to 15 age group. It also includes a website with links to news stories about the negative effects of marijuana (including a few on NPR.org).

To further reinforce the message, the agency has installed huge, human-sized rat cages near libraries and skate parks in Denver and at concert venues like Red Rocks Amphitheater. “It’s like a big art installation,” says Mike Sukle, who runs Sukle, the ad agency the state hired to design the campaign. “It’s the coolest thing that we’ve ever gotten to work on,” Sukle says. “But it’s a huge challenge.”

Ever since recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado in January, public health officials have faced an unprecedented challenge: explaining to teens why they shouldn’t smoke weed even though it’s legal for their parents to do so.

Surveys and focus groups the state conducted prior to launching the campaign suggest that some teens didn’t have a clue that smoking marijuana could hurt them, Sukle says. “Because of medical marijuana, a lot of kids thought it cured cancer. They really started thinking there was no harm to it.”

Campaigns against teen drinking and tobacco use have generally focused on the health risks. But while there’s no dearth of research that shows tobacco is bad for us, the research on marijuana’s effects is still in the preliminary stages. Since marijuana isn’t legal in most states, it’s been hard for researchers to get federal funding for studies, as well as access to large amounts of the substance. The Colorado campaign depends on small studies that are hardly bulletproof.

“The brains of teen marijuana users show significant abnormalities,” the website says. That’s technically true — researchers from Northwestern University observed differences in the brains of 20 casual pot users as compared to 20 nonusers. However, the researchers can’t say that these differences are caused by marijuana use, and there isn’t any evidence to show that these differences are associated with any harm. Plus the number of people in the study is so small it’s not reliable.

“A lot of the facts are from studies that are preliminary. And we wanted to be honest with the kids about that,” Sukle says. Hence the ‘lab rat’ theme. “Maybe [marijuana] isn’t going to be as bad as it looks,” he says, but it could be really damaging. The campaign asks teens whether they want to take that risk.

Read the full article HERE.

By NICK GERDA, Voice of OC

The County Board of Supervisors Tuesday rejected, for the second time since last year, a grand jury proposal for stronger ethics oversight of county government.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors. (Nick Gerda / Voice of OC)

The vote apparently was 5-0, but Supervisor Janet Nguyen objected to certain sections of the supervisors’ response to the grand jury, causing confusion over how her vote should be recorded. Exactly how the overall vote will be officially recorded won’t be known until Wednesday.

In their June report, the grand jury called on the Board of Supervisors to help create a strong, independent county ethics “program” to police the conduct of county officials and lobbyists.

“Ethics bodies work effectively to deter, detect, and punish ethics violations,” said the detailed report. “Vigorous ethics monitoring and enforcement is necessary to develop and maintain trust in government.”

Supervisors disagreed.

“I would agree that creating something new – just another level – is duplicative” and not probably getting to the heart of issues, said Supervisor Pat Bates at Tuesday’s county supervisors meeting.

“I would be very, very concerned with anybody that’s appointed to have subpoena powers that are currently restricted to our law enforcement officials.”

The issue is pitting supervisors against grand jurors and the county’s rank-and-file employees.

Jennifer Muir of the Orange County Employees Association told supervisors on Tuesday that county workers support the grand jury’s proposal.

“Your county workforce stands with the grand jury” in their call for an ethics commission, said Muir, the union’s assistant general manager.

Muir noted that last year’s grand jury described Orange County as a “hotbed of corruption.” The most recent grand jury reiterated calls from the prior year’s panel for an ethics commission.

Supervisors, meanwhile, have disputed the grand jury report, saying it mostly refers to old examples and that proper oversight is already in place.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer called for a wide-ranging dialogue on ethics next year, when he will likely be the supervisors’ chairman.

“I really do think we need to have a comprehensive discussion, both of the campaign contribution issues and the ethics issues,” he said.

Supervisor John Moorlach suggested ethics reform be looked at as part of a review of the county’s charter next year.

“It would be real nice to pursue a charter commission and just do a thorough charter for the county that would address a lot of the concerns and tie everything together so we address ethics and campaign reform reporting in that document,” said Moorlach, who volunteered to serve on the commission. He leaves the Board of Supervisors at the end of this year because of term limits.

Chairman Shawn Nelson said there were practical problems with an ethics commission, like who would be appointed to preside over it.

If someone doesn’t like the way the government is run, he added, “you don’t just invent the fourth branch of government…I don’t know who is sort of the ultimate moral authority to appoint that branch.”

In her comments Tuesday, Muir reiterated calls from union officials for an across-the-board transparency measure, known as CRONEY.

The ordinance would shine a light on how large private contracts are negotiated, she said, and give the public more time to evaluate the costs of contracts.

If supervisors don’t adopt the ethics commission, “at the very least adopt CRONEY,” Muir urged.

“I think the taxpayers believe that when you approve $133 million for a contract, the contract is going to cost $133 million, not $133 million plus a change order” or extra charges for electricity or overtime, she said.

Muir asked the supervisors to schedule a future discussion of the proposed CRONEY law. Board members didn’t show interest in doing so.

As a reason for not pursuing a commission, Supervisor Janet Nguyen pointed to the state’s decision to take away $73 million per year in funding from the county.

“We do not have the funds” for a commission because of that, said Nguyen.

The grand jury, meanwhile, estimated the yearly cost of an ethics commission at about $500,000, or less than 0.01 percent of the county’s total annual budget.

Their report said the percentage is roughly the same as the city of Los Angeles, which is far larger than Orange County, spends on its ethics commission.

Read the full story HERE.

From BBC

The musical, set during the Vietnam War, opened in London on Wednesday in front of a celebrity-packed audience.

The classic helicopter scene has been updated for the new production. Photo by Michael Le Poer Trench/BBC

It has already broken box office records for advance bookings.

“For me in my own lifetime to reinvent one of the greatest musicals ever written is a privilege,” said Sir Cameron.

Among the star names at the show were Stephen Fry, Lord Julian Fellowes, Miranda Hart, actor Eddie Redmayne and film director Tom Hooper.

Based on the opera Madame Butterfly, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg’s musical tells the tragic story of an orphaned Vietnamese girl, Kim, who falls in love with an American GI named Chris.

Schonberg and Boublil, who also wrote Les Miserables, have written a new song called Maybe for the production.

“This show seems to have a stronger rapport with the audience than it did 25 years ago,” said Sir Cameron, after the opening night at the Prince Edward Theatre.

“We’ve got record breaking advance booking but it’s not from the normal theatre audience. It’s from mostly younger people, a few hardcore fans, but mostly younger people who’ve never seen the show. They’ve heard about it from their parents.”

The theatre impresario – whose other productions include Les Miserables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera – was recently named among the billionaires on the Sunday Times super-rich list.

Miss Saigon broke the record for the largest single day of sales in West End and Broadway history when it went on sale last September, with takings of £4.4m on the first day.

That figure eclipsed the amount taken by The Book of Mormon, which set the previous record in March 2013 when it took £2.1m in one day.

Sir Cameron said the revamped production of Les Miserables in New York was also attracting a new generation of musical fans.

Read the full article HERE.

From Associated Press

HANOI, Vietnam — Landslides triggered by heavy rains from a tropical storm have killed at least seven people in northern Vietnam.

 A man holds up his motorbike as winds become stronger due to Typhoon Kalmaegi on September 16, 2014 in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province of China. Typhoon Kalmaegi his Zhanjiang on Tuesday. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)

The chief administrator of Lang Son province’s Cao Loc district, Hua Anh Tuan, says six people were killed and five others were injured when a landslide buried the hut they were sleeping in early Wednesday. A 5-year-old girl was killed and her mother was injured when another landslide struck their house.

Tropical Storm Kalmaegi was downgraded from a typhoon when it struck northern coastal Vietnam on Tuesday night. About 55,000 people in four northern coastal provinces were evacuated ahead of the storm.

The typhoon slammed into the northern Philippines on Monday, unleashing flooding and killing at least two people.