GorillaOffTopic, Everything But Gorilla Trades

Over the last several years, the U.S. has waged a war against smoking (mostly targeting teens and young adults), and the campaign has cost big tobacco billions of dollars. The good news is that, according to the report “America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2008,” teen smoking is down. Unfortunately, while everyone was at the anti-smoking party, teen pregnancy sneaked in and robbed the house!  According to the National Institute of Health, teen pregnancies are up for the first time since 1991. It seems like every time we take a step forward we end up taking two steps back! The report comes after a rash of high-profile teenagers, such as Jamie Lynn Spears and several teenagers at Glouster High School in Massachusetts, gave birth recently. Federal health officials don’t know why the numbers have jumped in this past year since there isn’t sufficient enough data at this time to indicate the reasons why.  The Director of the National Center for Health Statistics in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that it could be a “blip” in the data, but is it really, or is it a trend? He also says that teen pregnancy rates are an indicator of how the overall health and mental well being of these teens will be for the next 20 years to come. Another concern is that many teens don’t get the proper prenatal care, which can contribute to low birth weight and a variety of other health issues in babies. A cutback in community resources for youth over the last eight years could help explain the increase in teen pregnancies, said Michele Ozumba, director of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention. She claims that the small community-based organizations are struggling to keep their doors open. Less resources for kids in need means it’s easy for teens to feel alone or unable to trust anyone.  Whether teens feel more emotionally unstable now than in the past or whether it is the “in” thing to do (such as the pact made by teens in the pregnancy sect in Massachusetts), is the question that needs to be answered before it becomes an epidemic. It sure seems to the Gorilla that it could be a “lesser of two evils” situation: there may be less people potentially dying of lung cancer from smoking, but there may be a new baby-boom ensuing among teen instead!