Denver officials have started proceedings to take away a southwest Denver sports bar’s liquor and dance cabaret licenses after employees were found working as prostitutes in the bar, according to court records.
Women working at Mecca Sports Bar, 2915 W. Mississippi Ave., in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, routinely offered customers in and outside of the bar sex for money, including undercover police officers, according to a show-cause order from the city.
The Denver Police Department’s vice and narcotics unit received information from the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Liquor and Tobacco Enforcement Division “about prostitution, unlawful liquor activity, and illicit narcotics sales occurring at the bar,” the order stated.
An order to show cause is a court-ordered directive for a party to appear and explain why a specific, requested action — in this case, the revocation of the Denver bar’s liquor and cabaret licenses — should not be approved.
Mecca Sports Bar did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Colorado Department of Revenue officials told Denver police that an anonymous complaint had been made about young girls working at the bar offering men “off-premise bottle service,” according to the order. The girls would leave with the customers, be dropped back off at the bar later in the night and be paid for the night by the bar manager.
The vice unit launched an undercover operation at Mecca Sports Bar, formerly known as Club Dubai, in August 2025, city officials wrote in the show-cause order.
An undercover officer contacted a young woman who walked out of the bar and approached the officer’s vehicle, the order stated. She told him it would cost $300 for “culear” — a common Spanish slang term for “sex,” according to the document.
The officer agreed and the woman got into the car, officials said in the document. When the officer told her it was a sting operation, the woman admitted that she and the other employees would go outside to “engage in prostitution.” She also said they would frequently purchase liquor inside the bar and resell it to customers at a higher price.
Further undercover operations in September and November of 2025 revealed that more women at the bar were engaging in prostitution and overcharging customers for profit, according to the document.
One woman told officers that the Mecca did not explicitly allow prostitution-related work, but she said several employees would ask men to leave first and then follow them outside for sex, police said.
During one of the undercover operations, officers discovered a bar security guard was armed with an airsoft gun. The man had a valid private security license but was not authorized to carry an airsoft gun while on duty, city officials wrote in the show-cause order. That was also cited as a reason to revoke the bar’s licenses.
The order was sent to Mecca’s ownership on Tuesday. Bar officials and their representatives will appear before Denver Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection officials on March 20 for the show-cause hearing.
Philip Morris International has begun ramping up production of its increasingly popular ZYN nicotine pouches at a new factory in Aurora, south of Denver International Airport.
PMI markets ZYN pouches as a much cleaner and safer method for obtaining nicotine than smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco, although FDA restrictions prevent the company from marketing its pouches as a smoking cessation product.
In January 2025, the Food and Drug Administration authorized ZYN as the first nicotine pouch cleared for marketing in the U.S, stating it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” But the FDA didn’t “approve” the pouches, given that it still considers all nicotine products harmful and potentially addictive.
Instead, the company uses terms like “no smoke,” “no spitting,” and “no tobacco leaf.” That last term is key.
Brian Erkkila, PMI’s senior adviser of scientific engagement, said that smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the U.S. Nearly 30 million Americans continue to smoke, and each year, 500,000 people die from cigarette smoking.
Smokers expose themselves to 1,000-plus compounds and carcinogens every time they light up. Some of the most damaging items on that long list are carbon monoxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrosamines, formaldehyde, benzene, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide and ammonia.
The dangerous compounds are a leading cause of multiple cancers, including lung, mouth, throat, and esophageal. Smoking contributes to a variety of cardiovascular diseases and is the primary cause of bronchitis, emphysema and reduced lung function. The nicotine addiction is so compelling that smokers make a dangerous trade-off, shortening their lives and harming those around them.
Enter the ZYN pouches, which come in 6-milligram and 3-milligram sizes. Flavors include Chill, Menthol, Cinnamon, Peppermint, Citrus, Smooth, Coffee, Spearmint, Cool Mint and Wintergreen. Users typically ingest four or more a day, tucking a pouch in between the upper or lower lip and gums.
The pouches contain pharmaceutical-grade nicotine, extracted from tobacco leaves but without the toxins. The nicotine, which is shipped to the Aurora plant, is mixed with a proprietary plant-based filler and flavorings and then piped down to the factory floor. Rows of machines place it into small pouches, which are weighed and scanned to ensure they have the right content. Fifteen pouches are placed into a can. Cans are stacked in groups of five, wrapped and eventually placed into boxes for shipping to retailers.
The process is fairly straightforward and largely automated. Workers monitor the machines and the conveyor lines to make sure things are flowing smoothly, but they aren’t stuck with repetitive motions for hours on end. Quality control workers dart in and out to grab product samples for frequent quality control tests.
Production and worker training are underway in the completed sections as 800 construction workers push hard to finish the remaining sections at the 600,000-square-foot facility. Between capital spending and construction wages, PMI, through its Swedish Match subsidiary, will invest about $1 billion in the Aurora plant.
Aurora will provide $7.1 million in tax rebates to PMI, while the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved $4.5 million in Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits and Adams County has agreed to chip in another $4.3 million in incentives.
The company has hired about 120 of the 500 workers it plans to eventually employ in Aurora, which is the location of its second U.S. ZYN plant after one in Owensboro, Ky. An online portal is available for those interested in applying for a position. The average wage is expected to be $90,000 a year.
The project has come together quickly since it was announced in July 2024, a rapid schedule driven by soaring demand. ZYN sales have grown by triple-digit rates in recent years, and the brand now accounts for an estimated 70% to 80% of nicotine pouches sold in the U.S.
ZYN pouches, and the plant itself, are not without opposition.
Public health officials argue that switching to alternative delivery methods for nicotine, even ones with fewer toxic compounds, doesn’t address the core issue of addiction. In the debate between harm reduction versus abstinence, they argue that the latter is both achievable and the only genuine solution.
Even in its purest form, nicotine comes with cardiovascular impacts, including an increased heart rate, temporary rises in blood pressure and constriction of blood vessels. Nicotine pouches are relatively new, meaning long-term impacts are still to be determined.
Users who don’t stop smoking can find themselves in worse shape than when they started using pouches, warned Arnold Levinson, a clinical professor and professor emeritus in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health at the University of Colorado School of Public Health.
“If you want to quit smoking, don’t think you’ll do it by ‘switching’ to ZYN – you’re likely get hooked on ZYN but keep smoking anyway,” said Levinson, who has done extensive research on tobacco use and smoking cessation and has played an important role in shaping the state’s tobacco policies.
A container of ZYN nicotine pouches at the office of Phillip Morris International’s facility in Aurora on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Erkkila, who is a former lead toxicologist at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, counters that half of ZYN users no longer smoke and many of the remainder smoke less.
“People do move away from cigarettes in a meaningful way,” he said.
ZYN pouches offer a slower nicotine absorption rate, which results in lower dopamine spikes. Pouches also come with fewer “habit loops,” such as lighting up, inhaling, and grinding down a stub, and they are less ritualistic and social in their usage.
Luke Niforatos, executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., said pouches are “extremely addictive, given their high nicotine content, and bear risks for cardiovascular and oral health.”
The public health community is especially worried about the impacts on underage users and young adults, he said. He and Levinson both argue that efforts to limit those under 21 from purchasing and using tobacco products are far from foolproof and safeguards are often circumvented.
Underage users may view pouches as a “healthier” and harder-to-detect way to get a nicotine buzz. And as with vaping products, flavors tend to have a greater pull on younger users. Denver voters, by a wide margin, banned the sale of flavored nicotine products in November. The law took effect at the start of the year, meaning most of the ZYN product lines won’t be available in the city.
“No one has ever kept kids from getting tobacco products — ZYN is another path to nicotine addiction and health problems for young people. The investment in ZYN manufacturing would have been much better spent elsewhere,” Levinson said.
Research shows that nicotine use can impair attention, learning and impulse control in underage users, one of many reasons why age limits exist.
PMI said it requires all retailers of its products to verify the ages of buyers and inspects retailers to ensure compliance. It follows strict rules, including those mandated by the FDA, to make sure the product is packaged and marketed in a way that appeals only to adult smokers.
The National Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted by the FDA and the CDC, found that 1.5% of middle school and high school students in the U.S. reported using nicotine pouches in 2023. By 2024, that had risen to 1.8%. Pouches remain well below the 5.9% usage found for e‑cigarettes, the most popular method.
While e-cigarette usage is down from 7.7% in 2023, more underage vapers have begun to use pouches as well, the survey found.
If you want to see what a “living constitution” looks like, go to Europe. On Tuesday, in Vainik v. Estonia, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that four longtime prisoners in Estonia were due restitution from the state for “weight gain, sleeping problems, depression, and anxiety” caused by not being allowed to smoke in prison.
The decision was grounded on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The text of Article 8 doesn’t mention any right to enjoy a cigarette whenever one pleases. Rather, it protects a broad “right to private life,” which the court accused Estonia of violating in the Vainik case. “The Court,” the judges wrote, “was sensitive to the context of the already limited personal autonomy of prisoners, and that the freedom for them to decide for themselves—such as whether to smoke—was all the more precious.” An odd ruling, but perhaps Europe loves its cigarettes that much?
It’s a Tuesday morning on East Colfax and there’s a rally outside a shop called Myxed Up Creations, which sells vapes, pipes and flavored tobacco products. About a dozen people are waving signs urging Denver voters to vote no on Referendum 310. The organizers of the rally want to repeal the ban on sales of flavored tobacco products.
They say a no vote will save jobs and keep millions of dollars in tax money in the city’s coffers, arguing it comes down to a matter of personal choice for adults — even if vaporizer flavors like strawberry, pink lemonade and menthol seem likely to appeal to youth.
“Adults have rights too. Yep. And this is one of the rights they’re trying to take away. And we all have rights. Adults like cotton candy, adults like flavored vapes. We all like a little bit of flavor,” said Kyle Manibusan, an assistant manager at Myxed Up Creations.
Opponents early this year started a petition drive to challenge the ban and successfully gathered nearly 11,000 valid signatures, enough to put the repeal on the ballot this year. A no vote on Referendum 310 would repeal the ban; yes would keep the ban in place.
Manibusan has worked in a vape shop for the last four years, and he said he believes in the products because they helped him quit cigarettes — menthol Marlboros, which he thinks are worse.
“Vaping is not tobacco, it is nicotine. It is a lot healthier and a lot healthier a choice to go ahead and consume,” Manibusan said.
The health impacts of vaping are much debated, including research showing it often leads to co-use, vaping and smoking. But the store’s manager, Rae Drennan, said vaping helped her quit smoking too.
“The sad part about it is if we don’t win, I don’t know what I would do because I like flavored vape and that’s what helped me get off of menthol cigarettes,” said Drennan, who features prominently in a campaign ad on Facebook.
She said she’s the mom of a pair of teenagers and that the shop and others diligently check IDs to prevent sales to minors.
“Even if you come in here and you want to buy a water, I still need to see your ID to show that you are at least 18 or older to enter the property,” Drennan said. “And then if you want to buy anything that has tobacco or nicotine related products, you do have to be 21.”
Awaiting the vote
Across Denver, about 600 businesses, including gas stations, convenience and grocery stores, have tobacco licenses, with perhaps a quarter being vape shops.
Drennan says each store has an economic impact that would be hard to replace.
“If we lose, then we’re losing a bunch of money that we help put into the communities,” she said.
Her boss, Phil Guerin, owns this shop on Colfax and four other Colorado locations. He’s been leading the charge to defeat the flavor ban and was rallying with his employees.
“I’m feeling really confident,” he said. “We are out today. This is a grassroots effort and we have more energy than ever.”
Vape products for sale in Myxed Up’s location on East Colfax Avenue in Denver. Nov. 19, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Guerin thinks by persuading libertarian-minded voters, including those who lean left, his side can prevail.
“These are the same people that legalized gay marriage. These are the same people that legalized marijuana. And so we’re really tapping into that libertarian streak that Denver really does have,” he said.
Guerin admits he’s worried about the future of his store and its four employees if the ban passes.
The repeal campaign — called “Citizen Power!” — estimates that keeping the flavor ban could cost the city almost $10 million in sales tax revenue, as well as about $2 million in early childhood education funds that come from nicotine sales. The repeal group also claims the city will lose almost $3 million in property taxes and licensing fees as businesses fail.
The other side disputes those figures as overstated and argues money lost to the city is far outpaced by long-term health costs from nicotine borne by consumers and health systems.
Opponents of the flavor ban also include multinational tobacco manufacturers. The repeal campaign received $75,000 so far from both the tobacco giant Altria and from Philip Morris International (PMI).
On the other side, the campaign in support of the flavor ban has received millions from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg on the yes side, giving it a 6-1 edge on the eve of election. The billionaire and philanthropist has given more than $2.7 million to the “Denver Kids versus Big Tobacco” campaign, according to filings with the city. Its ads have been running frequently on TV for weeks.
“We don’t have millions of dollars like Michael Bloomberg to throw at it, so it’s definitely more a word-of-the-mouth type of deal,” Guerin said. “We hand out flyers, we educate our customers that come in and let them know that, you know, without them choosing, we could lose our right. And every vote counts.”
Businesses at stake
In the northwest part of the city, Rami Sawaged owns and operates a warehouse called CA Wholesale. He sells vape products to more than 100 of the city’s roughly 150 shops, he said. Many are small stores, and their owners are telling him they could go under if the ban goes into effect.
“One of their biggest comments was, ‘I can’t just pick up a 10-year business that I can go move it to Aurora or Lakewood…It’s not that easy. I have a customer base. We have our customers, we want to keep them,’” said Sawaged, who has given more than $40,000 to the Citizen Power! campaign, according to filings with the city clerk’s office. .
Sawaged said he and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 14, from Jordan, where everyone smokes.
He said vaping helped his whole family quit. He predicts he could lose more than a third of his business, hundreds of thousands in annual revenue, if the ban passes, and he said the city would lose money too.
“I just think Denver still needs this money. The businesses that are located in Denver, they’re mom-and-pop shops. They’re trying to make a living,” Sawaged said.
Denver voters have until 7 p.m. Tuesday, Election Day, to return their ballots.
Our system is a 50-state hodgepodge of policies and practices. Is it a surprise that social services are overwhelmed?
Getty Images
Different pages
The dismal academic performance of American K-12 students compared with peers in other industrialized countries is obvious. Employers lament the lack of qualified applicants. Social services are overwhelmed. Who or what is responsible? What can be done?
An aspect of the issue rarely discussed is the difference between public education in the United States and that in other countries. In the U.S., there is no national vision of public education — no goals and policies exist to ensure a system best suited not only for the individual but for the greater good of the nation. There is national frustration, but no consensus.
Our public education system is a 50-state hodgepodge of visions, policies and practices. Families, voters, civic leaders and government officials have influence in each state. All are involved; no one is responsible. What outcomes would you expect?
– William H. Koehler,Fort Worth
Eyes opened
Do you like the America you see now? Do you like the greed and corruption of our so-called public servants? What about the protection of child sex predators? The cruelty of immigrant deportation when no crime other than illegal entry has been committed? The disregard for the Constitution and the rule of law? The substitution of unproven ideas for science-based health care?
Growing numbers of American see beyond the painful reality of the moment and are seeking a better country than either political party has proposed. The value of leaders with integrity who value a democratic America is apparent.
Meanwhile, other retailers such as Target removed lethal tobacco products from their shelves years ago. Where is Walmart on that?
– David Fusco,Arlington
Try, at least
For a retired professor, threats to diversity, equity and inclusion are like using four-letter words to stigmatize institutions that overtly welcome populations harmed in the past.
I’m a white native Texan, and my K-12 education included no native minority classmates. After graduate school, I never met a Black chemistry Ph.D. until the 1970s.
By the late 20th century, some things, including gender equality, improved. But whole generations of us grew up where public schools, drinking fountains and restrooms were segregated until, thankfully, the sacrifices of Martin Luther King Jr. and those like him “woke” some of us.
It’s not what we say but what we do. It’s not a perfect world. But it was a better one when we not only recognized inequities but did something about them.
Flavored vape products that critics say are aimed at youth, during a news conference aimed at Denver’s City and County Building on Monday, Dec. 12, 2024.
Hart Van Denburg/CPR News
Michael Bloomberg is making an expensive statement in Denver’s referendum battle over flavored nicotine products.
Bloomberg, a billionaire philanthropist and the former mayor of New York City, is by far the biggest donor in the political fight. He gave $1.5 million last month to the anti-nicotine campaign that wants to keep Denver’s “flavor ban” in place.
That followed another contribution of $73,500 from him in August, and it means the supporters of the ban now have a 4-to-1 lead in fundraising. That’s according to campaign filings posted Monday by the Office of the Denver Clerk and Recorder.
The move drew quick criticism from backers of the repeal, who are asking voters to abolish the ban and once again allow the sale of flavored vaporizers and other products in Denver.
“The real David vs. Goliath story is out-of-state billionaire money flooding Denver to keep the flavor ban in place,” said Phil Guerin, who owns the vape shop Myxed Up Creations on Colfax Avenue, as well as locations in four other Colorado cities, via email.
CPR reached out to Bloomberg for comment but hasn’t yet gotten a response.
The pro-flavor ban campaign calls itself “Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco” and is supported by anti-tobacco, education and health groups. It has now raised more than $2 million.
Those opposing the ban, including vape shops and multinational corporations that sell flavored products, have raised almost $470,000, according to the filings.
Bloomberg has fought for tobacco and smoking regulations before
Bloomberg, a longtime tobacco opponent, served as New York City’s mayor for three terms. He has officially been a Republican, independent and Democrat, and ran in the Democratic presidential primary in 2020.
As mayor he championed a number of public health initiatives, including a ban on indoor smoking at workplaces, a hike on the cigarette tax, an increase in the legal age to buy tobacco products and a ban on flavored e-cigarette products including menthol flavors.
Bloomberg, who is 83, ranked #14 on Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2025, with a net worth of $105 billion. He cofounded Bloomberg LP, a financial information and media company, in 1981.
How the people working to repeal the ban reacted
The Denver City Council banned flavored tobacco sales in December. Mayor Mike Johnson signed the measure. Opponents started a petition drive to challenge the ban and successfully gathered nearly 11,000 valid signatures. That was enough to put the repeal on the ballot in November.
Guerin said a coalition of Denver citizens and family- and minority-owned businesses “stood up for our city” — collecting thousands of signatures in Denver “to give voters a voice.”
“While their side spends millions from New York to dictate Denver’s policy, we believe Denver should decide Denver’s future — not an outside billionaire,” Guerin said.
The opponents of the flavor ban are operating under the name CitizenPower! Among the nearly $500,000 raised: almost $173,000 from the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance and $75,000 each from the tobacco giant Altria and the company Philip Morris International (PMI).
The “no” campaign has been running a 30-second ad on Facebook.
Supporters of the ban demurred from mentioning Bloomberg
In a statement, the Yes on 310 campaign said they have broad support from doctors, nurses, individuals and public health organizations like the American Lung Association, with endorsements from organizations including the Colorado Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Colorado.
The statement did not specifically mention Bloomberg.
“Our supporters are committed to protecting the health of Denver kids and stopping Big Tobacco from hooking them into a lifetime of nicotine addiction,” said Jodi Radke, regional director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in an emailed statement.
She said she’s confident that Denver voters, “will side with kids over Big Tobacco and vote yes to end the sale of flavored tobacco and protect our kids from a lifetime of addiction.”
Bloomberg has committed more than $1 billion to combat tobacco use globally, according to the website for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, which is one of several organizations funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, a nonprofit affiliated with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, also has given more than $350,000 to the campaign. Health consortium Kaiser Permanente has given $50,000 and the American Heart Association has given $30,000.
The money paid for a number of 30-second campaign ads.
Nearly $1.3 million of the anti-tobacco campaign’s spending has gone to GMMB, a political communications and advertising firm based in Washington, D.C., with offices in Seattle and San Francisco.
Will tobacco corps respond?
One big question now is whether deep-pocketed corporations that sell flavored tobacco, like Altria and PMI, which have already given to the no side, will now respond with bigger contributions of their own.
CPR reached out to both, but has not yet heard back from either.
Does the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance have the funds to match Bloomberg’s contributions?
“I wish!” Guerin said via text. “The short answer is no.”
The voters themselves will weigh in soon
Denver’s Referendum 310 will decide whether to keep or repeal Denver’s ban on flavored tobacco, including nicotine vaporizers that come in a range of fruity flavors.
If a majority of people vote “yes,” the city will continue to ban the products. If a majority vote “no,” the ban would be repealed and businesses would be allowed to sell the products again.
The ban, which affects 575 retailers that sell the products in Denver, is already in effect, but city officials have said they wouldn’t enforce it until after the election.
Legislation to ban casino smoking in Pennsylvania is progressing in Harrisburg
Currently, casinos can designate half of their floor space for cigarettes and cigars
Legislation to prohibit tobacco smoking on casino floors in Pennsylvania has once again cleared a House committee.
Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Frankel continues to seek a casino smoking ban at the state’s 17 casinos. Under current law, each casino can designate up to half of its gaming floor space for cigarettes and cigars. (Image: Rep. Dan Frankel)
Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny) has been leading the fight to extinguish casino smoking for many years. He’s once again crusading to force casino smokers to move outside to light up a cigarette or cigar.
Frankel’s House Bill 880 — a proposed amendment to the Pennsylvania Clean Indoor Air Act to withdraw exemptions afforded to slot machine facilities — passed the House Health Committee on Tuesday with a 22-4 vote. While the Health Committee lent bipartisan support, there are zero Republicans among the bill’s 23 cosponsors.
“Pennsylvanians should not have to choose between their jobs and their health,” Frankel said. “My legislation would eliminate loopholes that leave Pennsylvanian workers exposed to toxic smoke, expand the definition of smoking to include e-cigarettes, and give localities the ability to enact smoke-free ordinances that are more protective than state law.”
Pennsylvania’s current smoking statute allows casinos to designate up to 50% of the gaming space for smoking.
Bill Faces Long Odds
Frankel contends there’s a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that smoke-free gaming is better for business. He cites Parx Casino north of Philadelphia as the top revenue-generating property among Pennsylvania’s 17 brick-and-mortar casinos, and Parx officials say their decision to go smoke-free has lessened employee healthcare costs, improved morale, and attracted new customers, both gaming and nongaming patrons.
Research on trends in the casino business and consumer attitudes indicates that the conventional wisdom that smoking bans cause economic harm is severely outdated and unsupported by contemporary evidence,” Frankel said.
That might be true, but many lawmakers continue to side with the gaming industry in the belief that a smoking ban would hurt play and lead to thousands of job layoffs. It’s why HB880 faces long odds of passing the General Assembly and moving to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D) desk.
Last year, Frankel’s legislation to prohibit casino smoking passed the House Health Committee but stalled upon reaching the House floor.
All but two of Pennsylvania’s 17 casinos permit indoor smoking. Parx and its satellite mini-casino, Parx Shippensburg, are the exceptions.
Casino Smoking States
In the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are outliers when it comes to allowing casino smoking. Gaming floors in Maryland, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all prohibit indoor cigarettes and cigars.
Opponents to smoke-free casinos in Atlantic City and Pennsylvania regularly claim that a ban would lead to smokers patronizing the other market where smoking remains. The drive from Philadelphia to Atlantic City is just an hour.
Both markets are performing well. In 2025, in-person casino revenue in Atlantic City, from January through August, was up 2.8% to more than $1.97 billion. Pennsylvania casino revenue in the state’s 2024/25 fiscal year totaled $3.36 billion.
An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shot a teenager in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, on Thursday evening, the city’s mayor said.
The shooting happened on Waugaman Street at the Linmar Terrace housing complex around 6:20 p.m., officials said.
Aliquippa Mayor Dwan B. Walker said an ATF agent shot the boy, who is an Aliquippa High School student.
Sources told KDKA that the boy was shot in the head.
District Superintendent Dr. Phillip Woods confirmed that the boy, whose name hasn’t been released, was 17 years old. His condition is unclear at this time.
Woods said that a Trauma Support Team will be on-site at the Junior/Senior High School on Friday during student arrival and the district will have resources throughout the day as needed for students.
In a statement Thursday night, Pennsylvania State Police said ATF and FBI agents “working in a joint investigation” were involved in the shooting. It was not immediately clear why the agencies were in Aliquippa, and more details surrounding the shooting were not immediately released by authorities.
A neighbor described an emotional and tense scene in Beaver County, highlighted by a large police presence.
A photo of the scene showed at least nine police vehicles near where the shooting happened. Witnesses said they heard multiple gunshots.
A large police presence in Aliquippa on Sept. 18, 2025.
Photo Credit: KDKA
“We’re frustrated because we don’t want this to be a new normal,” resident Sandra Pope said.
The Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the shooting. The ATF said in a statement that it is “supporting” the investigation “as needed.”
“We’re asking for clarity and calmness,” Walker said. “We’re asking people to search their inner self, take a deep breath, get all the facts before you snap to judgment and quick to punish.”
Walker added that he is praying for the victim and his family.
A man suspected of leaving incendiary devices at a Prince George’s County, Maryland, firehouse three times over the past few months has been arrested.
Police said surveillance video from Aug. 13, 2025, shows a man putting a device in a mailbox at a fire station in Capitol Heights, Maryland. (Courtesy Prince George’s County Police)
Police said surveillance video from Aug. 13, 2025, shows a man putting a device in a mailbox at a fire station in Capitol Heights, Maryland. (Courtesy Prince George’s County Police)
Slater Chaia, 36, of District Heights, was identified and arrested three days after the release of surveillance video, recorded Aug. 13, showing a man carrying what appears to be Molotov cocktails, and placing one in a mailbox and another on the driveway at PGFD Station 805, in Capitol Heights.
During last Wednesday’s news conference, Prince George’s County police, the county fire & EMS department, the Capitol Heights Police Department, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms didn’t provide details about the two other incidents at Station 805, to avoid compromising their investigation. Nobody was hurt.
Assistant Fire Chief Caroll Spriggs said there had been no other such incidents at any other county fire stations, and Spriggs believes the Capitol Heights station was being specifically targeted in order to intimidate the personnel there.
Saturday morning, an on-duty firefighter noticed a man matching the suspect’s description, across the street from the fire station. Police arrested him without incident.
In connection with the Aug. 13 incident, Chaia is charged with two felonies: possession of a destructive device, and possession of incendiary material with intent to create a destructive device — each carries a maximum sentence of 25 years and a $250,000 fine. He’s also charged with reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor.
In a Sunday news release, Prince George’s County Police said Chaia is being held without bond, and that the investigation into the recent cases will continue. Online court records don’t yet reflect his arrest.
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San Rafael Police on Saturday asked the public for help as they investigate a “suspicious” fire that destroyed an apartment complex on Thursday.
The fire at 516 Canal Street, between Harbor and Hoag streets, destroyed the building, and a body was later found in the ruins of the apartment.
Police are now asking residents for any photos or videos they may have from between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. Thursday taken in the area of 516 Canal Street. Calls about the fire first began around 5:36 a.m., Sgt. Justin Graham said on Saturday.
During a briefing, Graham said their two biggest priorities were to locate the missing individuals and continue with recovery efforts. The body found was not confirmed to be one of the two missing people.
Graham said that the structural damage to the building impeded their work on Friday evening and that Marin County crews were helping make the structure safe.
He also gave more information about one of the people who was injured during the fire. Graham said crews had rescued a person who jumped out of a window and had broken their leg. They have since been released from the hospital and are recovering.
The fire displaced 55 adults, Omar Carrera, the CEO of Canal Alliance, said.
Carrera said the affected residents are now staying at a hotel, and that there are high school students and one baby among the displaced. He said they are getting help from other nonprofits and the San Rafael School District.
He went on to say that some of the people affected have lost documents, immigration papers, and money in the fire. One of their next steps is to get them into permanent housing, which could take four to six weeks, Carrera said.
Anyone with photos or video is asked to submit it to reportit.com, call police at 415-485-3000, or call the ATF hotline
Jose Fabian is a web producer for CBS Bay Area where he reports on local crime, politics and breaking news. He studied political science and journalism at Sacramento State and was born and raised in Northern California.
Tobacco-less nicotine products for sale at Myxed Up’s location on East Colfax Avenue in Denver. Nov. 19, 2024.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
A ballot fight over a ban on flavored tobacco in Denver has raised nearly half a million dollars. That’s according to campaign filings posted this month on the website of the Office of the Denver Clerk and Recorder.
Denver’s city council passed a ban on flavored tobacco last year.
It aimed to stop the sale of products that public health groups say can lead to a lifetime of tobacco addiction. Vape shops and the tobacco industry called it overreach and fired back. They gathered thousands of signatures to successfully put the prohibition before voters in November.
Campaign filings show the repeal effort, organized as Citizen Power!, has so far brought in around $328,000. That’s more than twice the amount raised by a coalition of anti-tobacco, health and education groups, working under the name of Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco. The coalition has raised $143,000.
Top contributors to the repeal effort include local vape advocates and multi-national tobacco company Philip Morris International, which makes a diverse array of products like Marlboro cigarettes brand, smoke-free (heated tobacco) products under brands like IQOS, and ZYN nicotine pouches.
The company is building a plant to manufacture the pouches in Aurora.
Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, a 501(c)4 nonprofit group affiliated with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, has given nearly $87,000 to the Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco Campaign. Health consortium Kaiser Permanente gave $50,000 and Brown Strategy, a digital campaign ad group, contributed $5,000.
PEABODY — A proposed generational tobacco sale ban for the city was tabled after a two-and-a-half hour public hearing Thursday night featuring those on both sides of the issue from around the state.
The ordinance before the Board of Health aimed to ban the sale of tobacco products in Peabody to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2004.
But with city councilors and local retailers showing up to oppose the measure, Board of Health Director Sharon Cameron suggested the Board work with local tobacco retailers to create an industry-led, self-regulation program around tobacco products.
“Throughout my 20 years in local public health, we have always been two steps behind the tobacco industry…” Cameron said following public comment Thursday. “Let’s ask the retail tobacco industry to partner with us in a meaningful way to reduce the rates of kids initiating tobacco use.”
Such a program could include training on tobacco policies and how to spot illegal tobacco products, like flavored goods that are sometimes sold to retailers in falsely labeled packages with documentation that they are legal, Cameron said.
The program could set up a tobacco retailer certification similar to what restaurants have for certified food managers, along with compliance checks retailers could conduct themselves. The program could also include protocols created by retailers and the Board for assessing tobacco products for illegal gimmicks like being flavored.
The Board adopted language to clarify its current discipline policies for retailers who violate tobacco sale laws and voted to initiate this program over the next year or two. And, if the program isn’t effective, to revisit regulations like the ban discussed Thursday.
That proposal is similar to a “nicotine-free generation” measure Brookline passed in 2020 that banned the sale of such items to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2000, a law that was upheld by the Supreme Judicial Court earlier this year.
Since then, such laws have been proposed and hotly debated statewide in communities like Groton, Lexington and Medford, and passed in nearly 10 communities including Wakefield, Melrose, Stoneham and Reading, among others.
Opponents who spoke Thursday said the ban would fuel a black market and harm convenience stores while creating two classes of citizens. The concerns came from local convenience store owners, adult tobacco use rights activists, Peabody residents and citizens from other communities where this type of ban has been presented.
“I oppose this policy because it proposes to restrict the freedom of adults to choose,” Cambridge resident Emily Wieja said at Thursday’s meeting. “We allow adult consumers to choose addictive substances and practices like alcohol, marijuana and modern gambling. It’s ridiculous to propose a complete ban on tobacco.”
A generational tobacco ban isn’t the first major reform on tobacco Massachusetts has seen in recent years. A statewide flavored tobacco ban was passed on Beacon Hill in 2019 and the national minimum tobacco sales age was also raised from 18 to 21 that year.
Carlos Cesar owns a convenience store and gas station on Route 1. He told the Board of Health Thursday these tighter regulations on tobacco sales have cost his business $60,000 in tobacco revenue over the last several years.
“This will directly impact our sales, our livelihood, our doing business, and it will affect us,” added Arthur Hiu, owner of A&L Liquors in Peabody Square.
Peabody City Councilors Dave Gamache, Anne Manning-Martin, Stephanie Peach and Julie Daigle also spoke Thursday against adopting the ban.
They too said it would hurt convenience stores and would turn Peabody into an island among communities that still allow the sale of these products to everyone over age 21.
The ban also doesn’t address youth tobacco use directly, they said, despite that being part of the law’s reason for being adopted in other communities. They argued it would be more effective to tackle this issue through better enforcement and education, rather than a regulation like this.
Tobacco use among high schoolers has declined from 23.9% in 2009 to 11.4% in 2017, according to data from the state. That same year, the percent of high schoolers smoking cigarettes in the state hit a low of 6.4%.
But e-cigarette use increased 900% among high school students between 2011 and 2016. Since then, the use of vape pens and other newer, non-conventional tobacco products have gained popularity among youth.
The three most common ways youth obtain tobacco products is from friends, a family member or a tobacco permit holding establishment, said Laura Nash, an epidemiologist with the North Shore Public Health Collaborative.
That’s why it’s time to push for a “tobacco free generation” through bans like this, supporters said.
Board of Health member Julia Fleet was in favor of pushing through the ban Thursday and was the sole member on the three-person board to vote against tabling it.
Not adopting the ban now means the city is losing time in the fight to curb tobacco use, she said.
“The ultimate goal for public health is that phasing out tobacco sales is to the benefit of our population as a whole,” Fleet said.
Attorney Mark Gottlieb defended the Brookline law before the SJC. He said at Thursday’s meeting that no convenience stores in Brookline had closed since the policy was enacted three years ago.
“While for some the nicotine-free generation idea may seem radical or a step too far, they may actually be in the minority,” he said, citing a 2023 CDC study that found the majority of Americans favor a policy to ban the sale of all tobacco products.
Gottlieb has been joined by doctors and activists in encouraging local health boards around Massachusetts to pass generational tobacco ban rules over the last several months.
As for Peabody becoming an island, Mass General Hospital pediatrician Jonathan Winickoff told the Board that won’t be the case.
“The (tobacco) industry shuts down state level action unless a lot of towns come together first and take courageous action…” he said. “Once the momentum gets going, as it is for (generational bans), it won’t be long… I think before town by town, if Peabody takes this action, that we will be on a level playing field.”
It is clear tobacco is bad for the lungs and body, but what about cannabis?
More people are consuming marijuana, and it is taking a toll on the alcohol industry. But while marijuana is healthier than alcohol, what about tobacco? Is smoking marijuana bad for your lungs? There are multiple ways to consume cannabis – gummies, oils, vapes and smoking. Smoking is currently holding on to the most popular way to consume, but new users consider it “old school”. One key reason is the effort needed to smoke. Vapes and gummies are easier to use “on the go” and have don’t have the smell. So they are easier in larger social situations. But there is still a faithful core committed to smoking. And for them, the lung question is important.
Smoking marijuana damages the lungs and can lead to chronic respiratory issues. Regular marijuana smokers often experience symptoms like chronic cough, increased phlegm production, wheezing, and acute bronchitis. The smoke from marijuana combustion contains many of the same toxins, irritants, and carcinogens found in tobacco smoke.
Photo by AnnaStills/Getty Images
Interestingly, studies have shown mixed results regarding marijuana’s effects on lung function measures. Some research indicates marijuana smoking is associated with airway inflammation and increased airway resistance. However, other studies have found that low to moderate marijuana use may not significantly impair lung function and may even be associated with increased lung capacity. The reasons for these conflicting findings are not fully understood, but may relate to the bronchodilating and anti-inflammatory properties of some cannabinoids.
Emphysema rates appear higher in marijuana smokers compared to tobacco smokers and non-smokers. Marijuana smoking has been linked to large air pockets forming between or within the lungs, especially in heavy users. However, the evidence for increased risk of lung cancer or COPD from marijuana alone remains inconclusive and requires further research
While marijuana smoke contains harmful compounds similar to tobacco smoke, there are some key differences. Marijuana is typically smoked less frequently than tobacco, leading to lower overall exposure.
But Marijuana smokers tend to inhale more deeply and hold smoke in their lungs longer, potentially increasing damage. And additionally, unlike tobacco, marijuana smoke is usually not filtered, which may increase toxin exposure.
Occasional use cases much less harm, so this information is for more for daily consumers, which can lead to other issues.
Could the apparent increased stroke risk in vegetarians be reverse causation? And what about vegetarians versus vegans?
In the “Risks of Ischaemic Heart Disease and Stroke in Meat Eaters, Fish Eaters, and Vegetarians Over 18 Years of Follow-Up” EPIC-Oxford study, not surprisingly, vegetarian diets were associated with less heart disease—10 fewer cases per 1,000 people per decade compared to meat eaters—but vegetarian diets were associated with three more cases of stroke. So, eating vegetarian appears to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease by 7 overall, but why the extra stroke risk? Could it just be reverse causation?
When studies have shown higher mortality among those who quit smoking compared to people who continue to smoke, for example, we suspect “reverse causality.” When we see a link between quitting smoking and dying, instead of quitting smoking leading to people dying, it’s more likely that being “affected by some life-threatening condition” led people to quit smoking. It’s the same reason why non-drinkers can appear to have more liver cirrhosis; their failing liver led them to stop drinking. This is the “sick-quitter effect,” and you can see it when people quit meat, too.
, new vegetarians can appear to have more heart disease than non-vegetarians. Why might an older person all of a sudden start eating vegetarian? Well, they may have just been diagnosed with heart disease, so that may be why there appear to be higher rates for new vegetarians—an example of the sick-quitter effect. To control for that, you can throw out the first five years of data to make sure the diet has a chance to start working. And, indeed, when you do that, the true effect is clear: a significant drop in heart disease risk.
So, does that explain the apparent increased stroke risk, too? No, because researchers still found higher stroke risk even after the first five years of data were skipped. What’s going on? Let’s dive deeper into the data to look for clues.
What happens when you break down the results by type of stroke and type of vegetarian (vegetarian versus vegan)? As you can see below and at 2:09 in my video, there are two main types of strokes—ischemic and hemorrhagic. Most common are ischemic, clotting strokes where an artery in the brain gets clogged off, as opposed to hemorrhagic, or bleeding strokes, where a blood vessel in the brain ruptures. In the United States, for example, it is about 90:10, with nine out of ten strokes the clotting (ischemic) type and one out of ten bleeding (hemorrhagic), the latter being the kind of stroke vegetarians appeared to have significantly more of. Now, statistically, the vegans didn’t have a significantly higher risk of any kind of stroke, but that’s terrible news for vegans. Do vegans have the same stroke risk as meat eaters? What is elevating their stroke risk so much that it’s offsetting all their natural advantages? The same could be said for vegetarians, too.
Even though this was the first study of vegetarian stroke incidence, there have been about half a dozen studies on stroke mortality. The various meta-analyses have consistently found significantly lower heart disease risk for vegetarians, but the lower stroke mortality was not statistically significant. Now, there is a new study that can give vegetarians some comfort in the fact that they at least don’t have a higher risk of dying from stroke, but that’s terrible news for vegetarians. Statistically, vegetarians have the same stroke death rate as meat eaters. Again, what’s going on? What is elevating their stroke risk so much that it’s offsetting all their natural advantages?
Let’s run through a couple of possibilities. As you can see in the graph below and at 3:48 in my video, if you look at the vitamin D levels of vegetarians and vegans, they tend to run consistently lower than meat eaters, and lower vitamin D status is associated with an increased risk of stroke. But who has higher levels of the sunshine vitamin? Those who are running around outside and exercising, so maybe that’s why their stroke risk is better. What we need are randomized studies.
When you look at people who have been effectively randomized at birth to genetically have lifelong, lower vitamin D levels, you do not see a clear indicator of increased stroke risk, so the link between vitamin D and stroke is probably not cause-and-effect.
It may be worth reiterating that vegetarians do not have a higher risk of dying from a stroke, but they do appear to be at higher risk of having a stroke. How is that possible? Meat is a risk factor for stroke, so how could cutting out meat lead to more strokes? There must be something about eating plant-based that so increases stroke risk that it counterbalances the meat-free benefit. Might it be because plant-based eaters don’t eat fish? We turn to omega-3s next. For other videos in this series, see related posts below.
There certainly are benefits to vitamin D, though. Here is a sampling of videos where I explore the evidence.
As was often the case, 19th century newspapers’ front pages were filled with items to buy and sell. On this day in 1850, W.M & J.L. Pearson had hard hemlock and pine wood. Toppan & Pingry had Glory of Virginia…
The first study in history on the incidence of stroke in vegetarians and vegans suggests they may be at higher risk.
“When ranked in order of importance, among the interventions available to prevent stroke, the three most important are probably diet, smoking cessation, and blood pressure control.” Most of us these days are doing pretty good about not smoking, but less than half of us exercise enough. And, according to the American Heart Association, only 1 in 1,000 Americans is eating a healthy diet and less than 1 in 10 is even eating a moderately healthy diet, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:41 in my video Do Vegetarians Really Have Higher Stroke Risk?. Why does it matter? It matters because “diet is an important part of stroke prevention. Reducing sodium intake, avoiding egg yolks, limiting the intake of animal flesh (particularly red meat), and increasing the intake of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lentils….Like the sugar industry, the meat and egg industries spend hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda, unfortunately with great success.”
The paper goes on to say, “Box 1 provides links to information about the issue.” I was excited to click on the hyperlink for “Box 1” and was so honored to see four links to my videos on egg industry propaganda, as you can see below and at 1:08 in my video.
The strongest evidence for stroke protection lies in increasing fruit and vegetable intake, with more uncertainty regarding “the role of whole grains, animal products, and dietary patterns,” such as vegetarian diets. One would expect meat-free diets would do great. Meta-analyses have found that vegetarian diets lower cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as enhance weight loss and blood sugar control, and vegan diets may work even better. All the key biomarkers are going in the right direction. Given this, you may be surprised to learn that there hadn’t been any studies on the incidence of stroke in vegetarians and vegans until now. And if you think that is surprising, wait until you hear the results.
“Risks of Ischaemic Heart Disease and Stroke in Meat Eaters, Fish Eaters, and Vegetarians Over 18 Years of Follow-Up: Results from the Prospective EPIC-Oxford Study”: There was less heart disease among vegetarians (by which the researchers meant vegetarians and vegans combined). No surprise. Been there, done that. But there was more stroke, as you can see below, and at 2:14 in my video.
An understandable knee-jerk reaction might be: Wait a second, who did this study? Was there a conflict of interest? This is EPIC-Oxford, world-class researchers whose conflicts of interest may be more likely to read: “I am a member of the Vegan Society.”
What about overadjustment? When the numbers over ten years were crunched, the researchers found 15 strokes for every 1,000 meat eaters, compared to only 9 strokes for every 1,000 vegetarians and vegans, as you can see below and at 2:41 in my video. In that case, how can they say there were more strokes in the vegetarians? This was after adjusting for a variety of factors. The vegetarians were less likely to smoke, for example, so you’d want to cancel that out by adjusting for smoking to effectively compare the stroke risk of nonsmoking vegetarians to nonsmoking meat eaters. If you want to know how a vegetarian diet itself affects stroke rates, you want to cancel out these non-diet-related factors. Sometimes, though, you can overadjust.
The sugar industry does this all the time. This is how it works: Imagine you just got a grant from the soda industry to study the effect of soda on the childhood obesity epidemic. What could you possibly do after putting all the studies together to conclude that there was a “near zero” effect of sugary beverage consumption on body weight? Well, since you know that drinking liquid candy can lead to excess calories that can lead to obesity, if you control for calories, if you control for a factor that’s in the causal chain, effectively only comparing soda drinkers who take in the same number of calories as non-soda-drinkers, then you could undermine the soda-to-obesity effect, and that’s exactly what they did. That introduces “over adjustment bias.” Instead of just controlling for some unrelated factor, you control for an intermediate variable on the cause-and-effect pathway between exposure and outcome.
Overadjustment is how meat and dairy industry-funded researchers have been accused of “obscuring true associations” between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. We know that saturated fat increases cholesterol, which increases heart disease risk. Therefore, if you control for cholesterol, effectively only comparing saturated fat eaters with the same cholesterol levels as non-saturated-fat eaters, that could undermine the saturated fat-to-heart disease effect.
Let’s get back to the EPIC-Oxford study. Since vegetarian eating lowers blood pressure and a lowered blood pressure leads to less stroke, controlling for blood pressure would be an overadjustment, effectively only comparing vegetarians to meat eaters with the same low blood pressure. That’s not fair, since lower blood pressure is one of the benefits of vegetarian eating, not some unrelated factor like smoking. So, that would undermine the afforded protection. Did the researchers do that? No. They only adjusted for unrelated factors, like education, socioeconomic class, smoking, exercise, and alcohol. That’s what you want. You want to tease out the effects of a vegetarian diet on stroke risk. You want to try to equalize everything else to tease out the effects of just the dietary choice. And, since the meat eaters in the study were an average of ten years older than the vegetarians, you can see how vegetarians could come out worse after adjusting for that. Since stroke risk can increase exponentially with age, you can see how 9 strokes among 1,000 vegetarians in their 40s could be worse than 15 strokes among 1,000 meat-eaters in their 50s.
The fact that vegetarians had greater stroke risk despite their lower blood pressure suggests there’s something about meat-free diets that so increases stroke risk it’s enough to cancel out the blood pressure benefits. But, even if that’s true, you would still want to eat that way. As you can see in the graph below and at 6:16 in my video, stroke is our fifth leading cause of death, whereas heart disease is number one.
So, yes, in the study, there were more cases of stroke in vegetarians, but there were fewer cases of heart disease, as you can see below and at 6:29. If there is something increasing stroke risk in vegetarians, it would be nice to know what it is in hopes of figuring out how to get the best of both worlds. This is the question we will turn to next.
I called it 21 years ago. There’s an old video of me on YouTube where I air my concerns about stroke risk in vegetarians and vegans. (You can tell it’s from 2003 by my cutting-edge use of advanced whiteboard technology and the fact that I still had hair.) The good news is that I think there’s an easy fix.
This is the third in a 12-video series on stroke risk. Links to the others are in the related posts below.
As Colorado’s universal preschool program moves into its second school year this month, officials are hoping to leave its rocky rollout in the rearview mirror.
By the end of July, more than 31,000 4-year-olds matched with state-funded preschool providers for the coming year, according to the most recent data for the core program from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. Most will receive up to 15 hours of free classtime per week, though about 11,100 of them — about 3,000 more than last year — are expected to qualify for 30 hours each week, after state officials expanded eligibility criteria for the extra class time.
The number of providers participating in the program — in-home day cares, private practices, religious schools and public schools — has grown by about 150, to more than 2,000 statewide for this school year, Universal Preschool Program Director Dawn Odean said.
Taken together, that data points to the year-two stabilization of a program whose inaugural year, hiccups and all, was akin to “building the plane as we were flying it,” Odean said.
Colorado’s program was officially born in April 2022, when Gov. Jared Polis signed the bill to create it and the new Colorado Department of Early Childhood. The program was set for a fall 2023 launch. That left about 16 months to stand up the department, bring about 1,800 participating providers into the new system and sign up tens of thousands of families.
But entering year two of the $344 million program, Odean and local coordinating organizations are hopeful the initial struggles were growing pains associated with its launch. Department officials expect to meet or surpass last year’s sign-up numbers soon, and they hope to see enrollment increase by up to 5%.
“In a nutshell, I’ll tell you things are much better,” said Elsa Holguín, president and CEO of the Denver Preschool Program. It’s one of the local coordinating organizations, or LCOs, that act as a link between the state department and on-the-ground providers. “Things have gotten better for the families, things have improved for the child care providers and things have improved for the LCOs.”
But, she added, there’s always room for refinement.
“Are we where we need to be? No. We still have some work to do across the spectrum,” Holguín said.
The rollout of year two is still underway, with parents now able to walk through local providers’ doors to sign up for free preschool, space permitting, rather than being required to apply online. The full enrollment figures for this year won’t be available until the fall.
Aleia Medina, 5, second from right, and classmates attend a morning class with Rosario Ortiz at the Early Excellence Program of Denver on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Adapting to last year’s high enrollment
Ahead of last year’s launch, expectations for the first year began shifting about as soon as public planning for it began.
A promise of 10 hours a week of free classtime for all preschoolers turned into 15, with some students qualifying for double that time — considered full-day schooling — based on family circumstances. But months later, officials raised the threshold to qualify for 30 hours as overall enrollment rates shot up about 20% higher than expected, leaving some families feeling like the rug was yanked out from under them.
Initially, the state had planned to offer extra time to children deemed at risk if they qualified under an eligibility category — by having an individualized education plan, being a dual-language learner, coming from a low-income family or being in foster care.
When demand outpaced expectations, state officials changed the criteria to add base household income limits, at a middle-class level, as an additional qualification. Students still had to qualify under at least one other factor.
Meanwhile, providers and families were chafing at a confusing enrollment process that drew critical attention from state lawmakers.
But officials point to a number of under-the-hood changes since then to smooth out operations.
Voters in November approved a ballot measure last fall that allowed the state to keep $23.7 million in excess tobacco tax proceeds that help pay for the program. Officials expanded the criteria for 30 hours of free classtime to include all families who are at or below the federal poverty line, expanding access to some 3,000 more children. And the state streamlined enrollment processes to smooth out some of those first-year wrinkles.
“We’re ecstatic with year one as far as the number of children served and the number of providers participating — but (we) certainly knew that we stood up the program, and the process to enroll and register, in a fairly compressed timeline, which created some challenges,” said Odean, the state’s preschool program director, in an interview this week.
She also acknowledged the legal battles that played out in the first year.
A group of school districts had sued over the rollout, claiming that it hurt students with special needs and left school districts in a lurch. A judge ruled in July that the districts lacked standing to sue, while also acknowledging the “headaches” they faced, according to Chalkbeat.
In a separate January lawsuit, two Catholic schools sued over a nondiscrimination clause for preschool providers. That suit was largely rejected, but not before the state removed the nondiscrimination clause. About 40 religious schools are registered as universal preschool providers in the state this school year.
Odean said she couldn’t comment on the particulars of the lawsuits, but she appreciated the conversations they spurred about how to make sure families get the preschool they want — even if she wished they didn’t take the form of litigation.
Hunter Fridley, 4, counts the number of classmates during a morning class with Rosario Ortiz at the Early Excellence Program of Denver on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Private providers’ low enrollments “concerning”
When it came to preparing for school this year, Holguín, the Denver Preschool Program’s CEO, said preregistration for families and other changes to enrollment, in particular, “changed our world” by making it easier to connect them with preschool providers.
Diane Smith, director of the Douglas County Early Childhood Council, another LCO, likewise said the state’s program is better positioned this year “in many ways” — though it’s still too early to make a definitive call.
She still identified a number of focus areas for the future, including a desire for more lead time between announced changes to the program and when they’re implemented, along with more predictable, consistent funding for providers. And, of course, the unending work of making sure every family that wants to participate knows about the program and how to enroll in it.
In short, the first-year growing pains haven’t quite waned, Smith said, even as she excitedly reports that more providers have signed up to provide universal preschool in her area.
“Some people are bigger worriers than I am,” Smith said. “I’m the type who says ‘Yes, this is a little bit of a challenge, but I think intentions are always good.’ We’re looking to move forward and we have.”
Dawn Alexander, executive director of the Early Childhood Education Association of Colorado, which advocates for private preschool providers, warned that some of her members were starting to fret about “concerning” lowearly enrollment numbers — though she, too, cautioned that it was too early to raise a red flag.
Many families seem to be choosing school districts’ programs for their 4-year-olds, Alexander said, meaning that private preschools lose out on those enrollments. The older, less care-intensive preschool children help round out the rosters of many facilities that also provide day care for infants and toddlers, she said. Losing those populations can put their entire business at risk.
That, coupled with other strains associated with tight margins and fluctuating enrollment, add up for providers, she said. Many staffed up based on expected enrollment — and corresponding state funding — that’s so far not materialized, she said. She and other private providers raised similar concerns last year.
“You get too many frustrations and you go, ‘I’m out,’ ” Alexander said. “And you don’t want private providers to opt out of the system. It’s critical they be a significant part of it.”
Odean said there was still work being done around funding, including how to make it easier for families to qualify for — and providers to benefit from — the myriad state and federal preschool assistance programs.
There’s also a balance to strike between stable, predictable funding and ways to allow it to fluctuate so it meets current needs, she said. A smoother year two will make it easier for officials to be intentional about steps forward, she said.
“Things change, communities change — and so we have to continue to be responsive,” Odean said. “We just want to have some clear processes in place where we’re continuing to hear from families and providers, and we have a stable system and environment … so we can continue to improve.”
Implausible explanations for the obesity epidemic serve the needs of food manufacturers and marketers more than public health and an interest in truth.
When it comes to uncovering the root causes of the obesity epidemic, there appears to be manufactured confusion, “with major studies reasserting that the causes of obesity are ‘extremely complex’ and ‘fiendishly hard to untangle,’” but having just reviewed the literature, it doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me.
It’s the food.
Attempts at obfuscation—rolling out hosts of “implausible explanations,” like sedentary lifestyles or lack of self-discipline—cater to food manufacturers and marketers more than the public’s health and our interest in the truth. “When asked about the role of restaurants in contributing to the obesity problem, Steven Anderson, president of the National Restaurant Association stated, “Just because we have electricity doesn’t mean you have to electrocute yourself.” Yes, but Big Food is effectively attaching electrodes to shock and awe the reward centers in our brains to undermine our self-control.
It is hard to eat healthfully against the headwind of such strong evolutionary forces. No matter what our level of nutrition knowledge, in the face of pepperoni pizza, “our genes scream, ‘Eat it now!’” Anyone who doubts the power of basic biological drives should see how long they can go without blinking or breathing. Any conscious decision to hold your breath is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe. In medicine, shortness of breath is sometimes even referred to as “air hunger.” The battle of the bulge is a battle against biology, so obesity is not some moral failing. It’s not gluttony or sloth. It is a natural, “normal response, by normal people, to an abnormal situation”—the unnatural ubiquity of calorie-dense, sugary, and fatty foods.
The sea of excess calories we are now floating in (and some of us are drowning in) has been referred to as a “toxic food environment.” This helps direct focus away from the individual and towards the societal forces at work, such as the fact that the average child is blasted with 10,000 commercials for food a year. Or maybe I should say ads for pseudo food, as 95 percent are for “candy, fast food, soft drinks [aka liquid candy], and sugared cereals [aka breakfast candy].”
Wait a second, though. If weight gain is just a natural reaction to the easy availability of mountains of cheap, yummy calories, then why isn’t everyone fat? As you can see below and at 2:41 in my video The Role of the Toxic Food Environment in the Obesity Epidemic, in a certain sense, most everyone is. It’s been estimated that more than 90 percent of American adults are “overfat,” defined as having “excess body fat sufficient to impair health.” This can occur even “in those who are normal-weight and non-obese, often due to excess abdominal fat.
However, even if you look just at the numbers on the scale, being overweight is the norm. If you look at the bell curve and input the latest data, more than 70 percent of us are overweight. A little less than one-third of us is normal weight, on one side of the curve, and more than a third is on the other side, so overweight that we’re obese. You can see in the graph below and at 3:20 in my video.
If the food is to blame, though, why doesn’t everyone get fat? That’s like asking if cigarettes are really to blame, why don’t all smokers get lung cancer? This is where genetic predispositions and other exposures can weigh in to tip the scales. Different people are born with a different susceptibility to cancer, but that doesn’t mean smoking doesn’t play a critical role in exploding whatever inherent risk you have. It’s the same with obesity and our toxic food environment. It’s like the firearm analogy: Genes may load the gun, but diet pulls the trigger. We can try to switch the safety back on with smoking cessation and a healthier diet.
What happened when two dozen study participants were given the same number of excess calories? They all gained weight, but some gained more than others. Overfeeding the same 1,000 calories a day, 6 days a week for 100 days, caused weight gains ranging from about 9 pounds up to 29 pounds. The same 84,000 extra calories caused different amounts of weight gain. Some people are just more genetically susceptible. The reason we suspect genetics is that the 24 people in the study were 12 sets of identical twins, and the variation in weight gain between each of them was about a third less. As you can see in the graph below and at 4:41 in my video, a similar study with weight loss from exercise found a similar result. So, yes, genetics play a role, but that just means some people have to work harder than others. Ideally, inheriting a predisposition for extra weight gain shouldn’t give a reason for resignation, but rather motivation to put in the extra effort to unseal your fate.
Advances in processing and packaging, combined with government policies and food subsidy handouts that fostered cheap inputs for the “food industrial complex,” led to a glut of ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat, ready-to-drink hyperpalatable, hyperprofitable products. To help assuage impatient investors, marketing became even more pervasive and persuasive. All these factors conspired to create unfettered access to copious, convenient, low-cost, high-calorie foods often willfully engineered with chemical additives to make them hyperstimulatingly sweet or savory, yet only weakly satiating.
As we all sink deeper into a quicksand of calories, more and more mental energy is required to swim upstream against the constant “bombardment of advertising” and 24/7 panopticons of tempting treats. There’s so much food flooding the market now that much of it ends up in the trash. Food waste has progressively increased by about 50 percent since the 1970s. Perhaps better in the landfills, though, than filling up our stomachs. Too many of these cheap, fattening foods prioritize shelf life over human life.
But dead people don’t eat. Don’t food companies have a vested interest in keeping their consumers healthy? Such naiveté reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the system. A public company’s primary responsibility is to reap returns for its investors. “How else could we have tobacco companies, who are consummate marketers, continuing to produce products that kill one in two of their most loyal customers?” It’s not about customer satisfaction, but shareholder satisfaction. The customer always comes second.
Just as weight gain may be a perfectly natural reaction to an obesogenic food environment, governments and businesses are simply responding normally to the political and economic realities of our system. Can you think of a single major industry that would benefit from people eating more healthfully? “Certainly not the agriculture, food product, grocery, restaurant, diet, or drug industries,” wrote emeritus professor Marion Nestle in a Science editorial when she was chair of nutrition at New York University. “All flourish when people eat more, and all employ armies of lobbyists to discourage governments from doing anything to inhibit overeating.”
If part of the problem is cheap tasty convenience, is hard-to-find food that’s gross and expensive the solution? Or might there be a way to get the best of all worlds—easy, healthy, delicious, satisfying meals that help you lose weight? That’s the central question of my book How Not to Diet. Check it out for free at your local library.
This is it—the final video in this 11-part series. If you missed any of the others, see the related posts below.
Like the tobacco industry adding extra nicotine to cigarettes, the food industry employs taste engineers to accomplish a similar goal of maximizing the irresistibility of its products.
The plague of tobacco deaths wasn’t due just to the mass manufacturing and marketing of cheap cigarettes. Tobacco companies actively sought to make their products even more crave-able by spraying sheets of tobacco with nicotine and additives like ammonia to provide “a bigger nicotine ‘kick.’” Similarly, taste engineers are hired by the food industry to maximize product irresistibility.
Taste is the leading factor in food choice. “Sugar, fat, and salt have been called the three points of the compass” to produce “superstimulating” and “hyper palatability” to tempt people into impulsive buys and compulsive consumption. Foods are intentionally designed to hook into our evolutionary triggers and breach whatever biological barriers help “keep consumption within reasonable limits.”
Big Food is big business. The processed food industry alone brings in more than $2 trillion a year. That affords them the economic might to manipulate not only taste profiles, but public policy and scientific inquiry, too. The food, alcohol, and tobacco industries have all used similar unsavory tactics: blocking health regulations, co-opting professional organizations, creating front groups, and distorting the science. The common “corporate playbook” shouldn’t be surprising, given the common corporate threads. At one time, for example, tobacco giant Philip Morris owned both Kraft and Miller Brewing.
As you can see below and at 1:45 in my video The Role of Corporate Influence in the Obesity Epidemic, in a single year, the food industry spent more than $50 million to hire hundreds of lobbyists to influence legislation. Most of these lobbyists were “revolvers,” former federal employees in the revolving door between industry and its regulators, who could push corporate interests from the inside, only to be rewarded with cushy lobbying jobs after their “public service.” In the following year, the industry acquired a new weapon—a stick to go along with all those carrots. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court’s five-to-four Citizen’s United ruling permitted corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign ads to trash anyone who dared stand against them. No wonder our elected officials have so thoroughly shrunk from the fight, leaving us largely with a government of Big Food, by Big Food, and for Big Food.
Globally, a similar dynamic exists. Weak tea calls from the public health community for voluntary standards are met not only with vicious fights against meaningful change but also massive transnational trade and foreign investment deals that “cement the protection of their [food industry] profits” into the laws of the lands.
The corrupting commercial influence extends to medical associations. Reminiscent of the “just what the doctor ordered” cigarette ads of yesteryear, as you can see below and at 3:05 in my video, the American Academy of Family Physicians accepted millions from The Coca-Cola Company to “develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners.”
On the front line, fake grassroots “Astroturf” groups are used to mask the corporate message. RJ Reynolds created Get Government Off Our Back (memorably acronymed GGOOB), “a front group created by the tobacco industry to fight regulation,” for instance. Americans Against Food Taxes may as just as well be called “Food Industry Against Food Taxes.” The power of front group formation is enough to bind bitter corporate rivals; the Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association linked arms with the National Confectioners Association to partner with Americans for Food and Beverage Choice.
Using another tried-and-true tobacco tactic, research front groups can be used to subvert the scientific process by shaping or suppressing the science that deviates from the corporate agenda. Take the trans fat story. Food manufacturers have not only “long denied that trans fats were associated with disease,” but actively “worked to limit research on trans fats” and “discredit potentially damaging findings.”
At what cost? The global death toll from foods high in trans fat, saturated fat, salt, and sugar is at 14 million lost lives every year. The inability of countries around the world to turn the tide on obesity “is not a failure of individual will-power. This is a failure of political will to take on big business,” said the Director-General of the World Health Organization. “It is a failure of political will to take on the powerful food and soda industries.” She ended her keynote address before the National Academy of Medicine entitled “Obesity and Diabetes: The Slow-Motion Disaster” with these words: “The interests of the public must be prioritized over those of corporations.”
