Effects of Enforcement of Youth Access Laws on Smoking Prevalence

Smoking is the primary preventable cause of death, and yet 3,000 adolescents become smokers each day. Most adult smokers begin this deadly habit when they are under the age of 18, which is the minimum legal age for the purchase of cigarettes. The majority of adolescent smokers are able to purchase cigarettes even though laws prohibit the sale of cigarettes to minors. In the late 1980s, Woodridge, IL, became one of the first towns in the nation to demonstrate a significant reduction in the ability of youth to purchase cigarettes. Almost 2 years after passage of this legislation, the percentage of regular smokers among 7th- and 8th-grade students had been reduced from 16 to 5%. Seven-year follow-up data in a sample of high school youths indicate that youths living in communities with regular enforcement had significantly less smoking than those living in communities without regular enforcement. In particular, rates of regular smoking were 8.1% in communities with regular enforcement versus 15.5% in communities without regular enforcement. It is possible that adolescents who had restricted access to tobacco products were less likely to become regular smokers. These findings have important public health implications, particularly in light of recent federal legislation mandating that all states develop programs to reduce access of youth to tobacco products.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44050/1/10464_2004_Article_421046.pd

Breathless and Unexplainable Dread: Locating Manly Wade Wellman in the Weird and Appalachian Fiction Traditions.

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) was a prolific and potent Appalachian writer who emerged from the pulp weird fiction movement of the 1930s and 1940s with a distinctive voice that places him outside of the H.P. Lovecraft-influenced work which continues to dominate the genre to this day. Wellman\u27s style fuses weird fiction\u27s breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces with the Appalachian oral tradition of booger, haint and witch stories to produce a distinctly South-Central Appalachian variation of the weird fiction genre. This paper will differentiate Wellman\u27s Appalachian Weird from Lovecraft\u27s New England tradition, discuss his use of the Anglo-Appalachian ballad tradition, consider his mastery of the subtleties of Appalachian dialect, and celebrate his vision of the Appalachian people and land as redolent of magic and mystery. It will also include biographical information firmly establishing Wellman as an Appalachian writer and historian, an advocate for traditional music, an aficionado of bootleg whiskey, and a source of regional pride

You’d Best go Expecting Anything: Folkloric and Literary Precedents of Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John Stories.

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) wrote nineteen short stories and five stories about Silver John, a wandering ballad singer who moves through the southern Appalachians encountering a variety of supernatural events and creatures. This paper places Wellman’s approach to the region’s occult mythology in the contexts of traditional Appalachian ghost stories, Native American (primarily Cherokee) mythology, and the weird fiction of the pulp era. Wellman was enamored of the region, moving to Pine Bluff, North Carolina in 1951 and immersing himself in the culture. He presented a vision of the Appalachian people and the land itself as laden with magic and mystery. He had a keen appreciation for the subtleties of dialect, conveying it with a clarity and elegance seldom encountered. His use of the Anglo-Appalachian ballad tradition shows an appreciation for both its beauty and its role as a preserver and transmitter of cultural themes and motifs. Wellman’s work bridges the gap between the spoken tradition of booger, haint and witch stories and popular horror fiction. He is an appreciated but understudied Appalachian writer

The Strange, Sad Death of Lucinda Mills: An examination of Appalachia’s only known case of ritual murder.

In February, 1933, in Tomahawk, KY, at the culmination of a week-long Pentecostal revival that included fasting, dancing, incantation, and speaking in tongues, church members decided to offer up human sacrifices. An elderly woman, Mrs. Lucinda Mills, was selected as the first offering and her son, John H. Mills, choked her to death in front of the congregation. The church members were preparing to burn Mrs. Mill\u27s body on the altar when the local police, either tipped off by a neighbor or attracted by the commotion, burst into the church and began making arrests. Three other women had already been selected as additional offerings. Church members claimed they were held in thrall by a supernatural power and prevented from intervening. John H. Mills was the only person brought to trial. Charged with the murder of his mother, he was convicted and imprisoned. While well-remembered within the community, and widely covered by newspapers of the time, the event is now forgotten by the world at large. This study combines oral history and archival research techniques to document the death of Mrs. Mills in regional folklore and history. In addition to recording the story as remembered, it places the death in the context of the spread of the Holiness movement through the mountains of east Kentucky, examines the surviving documentation associated with the crime, and analyzes the media’s depiction of the events. It preserves s an overlooked aspect of Appalachian history and contributes to a richer understanding of the region’s culture