Smoking declines in California, but smokeless tobacco use rises among youth

Sacramento Bee
Though the prevalence of cigarette smoking among California high school students has declined over the past decade, smokeless tobacco use has risen among high school students, from 3.1 percent in 2004 to 3.9 percent in 2010, according a report released Thursday. The report, by Ron Chapman, state health officer and director of the California Department of Public Health, attributed the increase in part to a rise in the promotion and availability of snuff and other smokeless tobacco products.
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To Treat Drug Dependency, Doctors Are Burning Off Chunks of Addicts’ Brains

Smithsonian.com
For people combatting drug addiction and those trying to help them, the battle can be long and arduous. Right now, treating heroin or cocaine addictions involves behavioral interventions, replacement substances (such as methadone) or detoxification programs. The powerful symptoms of withdrawal and the tendency to relapse back to using behavior mean that kicking such a potent dependency is unlikely to ever be easy or seen as a sure thing. But, in recent years, says Maia Szalavitz for Time, an extreme and incredibly controversial new technique has arisen to combat addiction: through surgical means, doctors actually burn away the parts of the brain that deal with feelings of pleasure and motivation.
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Dan Walters: Workers' comp overhaul a recurring drill

Sacramento Bee

Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders tout an overhaul of the multi-billion-dollar system of compensating disabled workers for job- related illnesses and injuries as a major accomplishment this year.  Actually, negotiators for employers and labor unions hammered out changes in workers' compensation during months of private negotiations and handed them to the Legislature, thus continuing a time-honored – or, some say, dishonored – tradition of altering rules of the compensation system once a decade.
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Californian’s $609,000 Check Shows True Retirement Cost

Bloomberg
When psychiatrist Gertrudis Agcaoili retired last year from a state mental hospital in Napa, California, she took with her a $608,821 check for unused leave banked in a career that spanned three decades.  She wasn’t alone. More than 111,000 people who left jobs as employees of the 12 most populous U.S. states collected $711 million last year for unused vacation and other paid time off, according to payroll data on 1.4 million public workers compiled by Bloomberg.  California employees accounted for 39 percent of that total.
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Will Health Coverage For Older, Sicker Patients Become A Target for Cuts?

National Journal
As lawmakers search for ways to rein in chronic budget deficits, health coverage for people who are both old enough to qualify for Medicare and poor enough to receive Medicaid might end up as a target for cuts. These patients, who are known as dual eligibles, are costly to cover and their care is often poorly coordinated. Because of that, many budget cutters are convinced there are ways to make their coverage more efficient, which would save the government money. 
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Prescription to Die: How Medications May Be Killing Veterans Faster Than Suicide

Huffington Post (blog)
The doubling of the military suicide rate over the past decade has received a lot of attention lately -- including national headlines, multimillion-dollar research programs, and much-needed prevention efforts -- but veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face many other serious behavioral health problems as well. Post-traumatic stress disorder, domestic violence and alcohol abuse are problems that have been widely chronicled among returning veterans of our recent wars. Often left out of the discussion, however, is the terrible toll that prescription medications -- opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin -- take on veterans' lives.
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$1.2M gift aids Betty Ford Center

MyDesert.com
The Betty Ford Center has received a $1.2 million gift to teach medical professionals, especially doctors, about addiction and its treatment, officials announced Thursday.The Palm Beach, Fla.-based Scaife Family Foundation awarded the grant to the center’s Medical Education Initiative. The foundation was described as a “longtime supporter of efforts to improve the education of medical students and physicians, especially in the area of addiction to alcohol and other drugs” in a statement released Thursday by the center.
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