Of the many stigmatized issues that young people face, a significant one is the use and abuse of substances; which includes alcohol and other recreational drugs. As a full-time college student myself, I see how these issues plague my peers. I also see how these problems are not properly addressed in a university setting. As I watch my friends consistently struggle with the abuse of substances, I find myself becoming more and more frustrated. Many of my fellow students, a significant number of whom are not even twenty-one yet, have become dependent on alcohol. Nevertheless, we pretend as though... Read More

As one of the richest nation’s in the world, we should have a very high life expectancy.  For the second year in a row, however, life expectancy in the U.S. has fallen.  A study released last week in the British Medical Journal details the United States’ decline from the world leader in life expectancy rates, in the 1960s, to now 1.5 years below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) average. The National Research Council and Institute of Medicine set out to study why America’s new life expectancy, 78.7 years, falls so far below the OECD average of 80.3. The... Read More