The Effects of Prices and Policies on the Demand for Marijuana: Evidence from the National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse

Recent studies have shown that efforts to curb alcohol use by increasing the price of alcohol and limiting youth's access have succeeded, but they may have had the unintended consequencce of increasing marijuana use. This possibility is troubling in light of a recent government report that shows that marijuana use among teens more than doubled between 1990 and 1997. What impact will the proposed large increase in cigarette prices have on the demand for other substances such as marijuana? To better understand how the demand for marijuana responds to changes in the policies and prices that affect its use, we explore the National Household Survy on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). Overall, we find that marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco are complements, sot that increasing the price of any one will decrease the demand for marijuana. The results of this paper will help guide the creation of comprehensive policies that curb the use of marijuana in two ways: first, they quantify the effects of policies aimed at curbing the use of each substance, allowing policymakers to evaluate alternative policy options; and second, they clarify the dynamics and interactions between alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use in response to government policies.

Deep in the Heart of Texzines

Zines are small, informal, non-professional publications; creative outlets devoted to idiosyncratic self-expression, and are often used by members of different minority groups and subcultures as methods of cultural expression and communication. By their very nature zines are hard to pin down, but distinguishing common characteristics of zines include a small circulation (sometimes via subscription but often distributed informally among interested parties) and a raison d'etre stressing free expression over profit. The zine collection started at the archives is designed to preserve these alternative voices and provide users a new and deeper understanding of different cultural experiences. In conjunction with the development of the zine collection, the POC Zine Project’s RaceRiot! brought their thought-provoking and visually stimulating multimedia event and panel discussion to the university, a part of a whirlwind tour throughout the United States. The Project panel includes a rotating roster of speakers who offer, through their own zines, a chronology and a partial history of the creative and intellectual production of people of color. The Project has received rave reviews and news write-ups throughout their travels.This poster highlights some of the more graphically and thematically interesting zines in the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives Zine collection as well as the RaceRiot! speakers who shared their passionate opinions and views with us via photographs, twitter feeds, and video. This poster will show how zines in the library and archival collections can be used as an effective medium for giving a voice to the joys, concerns, and beliefs of outsider cultures and communities.TAMU Cushing Memorial Library & Archive

Persuasion, Promotion, Perception: Untangling Archivists\u27 Understanding of Advocacy and Outreach

More and more, archivists find themselves having to be advocates for their own institutions, fellow archival institutions, and themselves. This is an especially complicated turn of events because of discrepancy among archivists as to what specifically constitutes archival advocacy. Over the past year, as a response to this, the Issues & Advocacy Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists has been conducting surveys on archival advocacy in the profession, designed to gauge the advocacy environment as it exists among today’s archivists and archival institutions. The ongoing goal of the project has been to create a dialogue about what advocacy is, how it is defined, and the ways in which advocacy (as well as outreach activities) form part of our professional activities. In doing so, the Roundtable hopes to understand how it can best engage and educate the profession about shaping future archival-related policies

Applications of micro-fluidic platforms integrating packed stationary phases

To design and fabricate novel centrifugal micro-fluidic platforms integrating packed stationary phases for solid-phase micro-extraction in a wide range of (bio)analytical applications. To design and fabricate novel micro-fluidic platforms integrating packed stationary phases capable of withstanding significant high pressures

Perceptual Interactions Between Electrodes Using Focused and Monopolar Cochlear Stimulation

In today’s cochlear implant (CI) systems, the monopolar (MP) electrode configuration is the most commonly used stimulation mode, requiring only a single current source. However, with an implant that will allow simultaneous activation of multiple independent current sources, it is possible to implement an all-polar (AP) stimulation mode designed to create a focused electrical field. The goal of this experiment was to study the potential benefits of this all-polar mode for reducing uncontrolled electrode interactions compared with the monopolar mode. The five participants who took part in the study were implanted with a research device that was connected via a percutaneous connector to a benchtop stimulator providing 22 independent current sources. The perceptual effects of the AP mode were tested in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the current level difference between loudness-matched sequential and simultaneous stimuli composed of 2 spatially separated pulse trains was measured as function of the electrode separation. Results indicated a strong current-summation interaction for simultaneous stimuli in the MP mode for separations up to at least 4.8 mm. No significant interaction was found in the AP mode beyond a separation of 2.4 mm. In Experiment 2, a forward-masking paradigm was used with fixed equally loud probes in AP and MP modes, and AP maskers presented on different electrode positions. Results indicated a similar spatial masking pattern between modes. In Experiment 3, subjects were asked to discriminate between across-electrode temporal delays. It was hypothesized that discrimination would decrease with electrode separation faster in AP compared to MP modes. However, results showed no difference between the two modes. Overall, the results indicated that the AP mode produced less current spread than MP mode but did not lead to a significant advantage in terms of spread of neuronal excitation at equally loud levels