Current Marijuana Use and Alcohol Consumption Among Adults Following the Legalization of Nonmedical Retail Marijuana Sales - Colorado, 2015-2019.

In Colorado, excessive alcohol use* contributed to $5 billion in economic costs in 2010 (1) and >1,800 deaths annually during 2011-2015 (2). The most common pattern of excessive drinking is binge drinking (consumption of four or more drinks on an occasion for women or five or more drinks for men) (3), which is associated with increased likelihood of using other substances, including marijuana (4). Retail (i.e., nonmedical) marijuana sales began in Colorado on January 1, 2014. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and CDC used data from Colorado's 2015-2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine current use of marijuana (including hashish) by drinking patterns among 45,991 persons aged ≥18 years who responded to questions about alcohol and marijuana use. The age-standardized, weighted prevalence of current marijuana use among persons who reported binge drinking (34.4%) was significantly higher than the prevalence among current non-binge drinkers (14.8%) and nondrinkers (9.9%). Evidence-based strategies recommended by the Community Preventive Services Task Force to reduce excessive alcohol use and tobacco use (e.g., increasing prices or reducing access) can reduce alcohol- and tobacco-related harms. Similar strategies might be effective in reducing marijuana use and its potential harms as well.

Euler buckling and nonlinear kinking of double-stranded DNA.

The bending stiffness of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) at high curvatures is fundamental to its biological activity, yet this regime has been difficult to probe experimentally, and literature results have not been consistent. We created a 'molecular vise' in which base-pairing interactions generated a compressive force on sub-persistence length segments of dsDNA. Short dsDNA strands (<41 base pairs) resisted this force and remained straight; longer strands became bent, a phenomenon called 'Euler buckling'. We monitored the buckling transition via Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) between appended fluorophores. For low-to-moderate concentrations of monovalent salt (up to ∼150 mM), our results are in quantitative agreement with the worm-like chain (WLC) model of DNA elasticity, without the need to invoke any 'kinked' states. Greater concentrations of monovalent salts or 1 mM Mg(2+) induced an apparent softening of the dsDNA, which was best accounted for by a kink in the region of highest curvature. We tested the effects of all single-nucleotide mismatches on the DNA bending. Remarkably, the propensity to kink correlated with the thermodynamic destabilization of the mismatched DNA relative the perfectly complementary strand, suggesting that the kinked state is locally melted. The molecular vise is exquisitely sensitive to the sequence-dependent linear and nonlinear elastic properties of dsDNA.