Arizona's statewide smoking ban decreased hospital admissions for AMI, stroke, asthma, and angina.

BACKGROUND Using a water pipe to smoke tobacco is increasing in prevalence among US college students, and it may also be common among younger adolescents. The purpose of this study of Arizona middle and high school students was to examine the prevalence of water-pipe tobacco smoking, compare water-pipe tobacco smoking with other forms of tobacco use, and determine associations between sociodemographic variables and water-pipe tobacco smoking in this population. METHODS We added items assessing water-pipe tobacco smoking to Arizona’s 2005 Youth Tobacco Survey and used them to estimate statewide water-pipe tobacco smoking prevalence among various demographic groups by using survey weights. We also used multiple logistic regression to determine which demographic characteristics had independent relationships with each of 2 outcomes: ever use of water-pipe to smoke tobacco and water-pipe tobacco smoking in the previous 30 days. RESULTS Median age of the sample was 14. Accounting for survey weights, among middle school students, 2.1% had ever smoked water-pipe tobacco and 1.4% had done so within the previous 30 days. Among those in high school, 10.3% had ever smoked from a water pipe and 5.4% had done so in the previous 30 days, making water-pipe tobacco smoking more common than use of smokeless tobacco, pipes, bidis, and kreteks (clove cigarettes). In multivariate analyses that controlled for covariates, ever smoking of water-pipe tobacco was associated with older age, Asian race, white race, charter school attendance, and lack of plans to attend college. CONCLUSIONS Among Arizona youth, water pipe is the third most common source of tobacco after cigarettes and cigars. Increased national surveillance and additional research will be important for addressing this threat to public health.

We assessed the efficacy of time delay and peer modeling procedures in increasing autistic children's spontaneous verbalizations of affection. Four autistic children were taught to spontaneously say "I like (love) you" in response to a hug from a familiar person and their mother. Generalization from a free play training setting to free play outdoors and at home was assessed. Ancillary social and affection behaviors were also observed. Results indicated that the time delay was a quick and effective procedure for all the children. Peer modeling was unsuccessful in teaching the target behavior.

The purpose of this study was to carefully measure Intimate Partner Abuse (IPA) behaviors among a large (n = 864 couples) sample of pairs of husbands and wives who were mandated to attend divorce mediation and then to: categorize the behaviors into theoretically-driven types of IPA, determine the number of cases screened out of mediation for any reason, and investigate whether measured outcomes of mediation (primary physical and legal custody) were related to IPA. Results indicated that rarely was IPA not reported-the most frequently reported IPA behavior was psychological abuse (98% of wives; 97% of husbands), followed by physical abuse (58% of wives; 54% of husbands), escalated physical abuse (62% of wives; 50% of husbands), and sexual intimidation, coercion and rape (56% of wives; 29% of husbands). Rarely were couples reporting IPA screened out of mediation (5%), and rarely were supervised parenting time or restrictions on contact between parents included in mediated agreements made by couples reporting IPA (6.5%). The overall level of IPA was unrelated to the specific terms of mediated agreements; however, by far the most frequent type of mediated agreement the couples' negotiated in mediation was for primary physical custody to go to the wife and for the husband and wife to have joint legal custody (59% of cases). Analysis of the implications of these findings and policy recommendations are included.