"If Someone Has It, I'm Gonna Hit It": Lessons Learned From Minnesota Teens About Vaping.

Youth e-cigarette use or "vaping" has increased substantially in the past few years, an escalation attributable to flavored "pod mod" e-cigarette devices that deliver higher levels of nicotine compared with free-base nicotine found in other types of e-cigarettes. Use rates, addiction, and harms are alarming as negative effects from nicotine on adolescent brain development are well documented, and e-cigarette use is predictive of cigarette smoking initiation. This qualitative study examined what drives the appeal of these products through 10 focus groups conducted in 2019 with 67 Minnesota high school students. Focus groups aimed to understand students' personal experiences and contextual factors that may contribute to current vaping trends and explore opportunities for improved prevention messaging. Study results revealed participants' divergent perceptions of tobacco products (i.e., vaping vs. e-cigarettes vs. cigarettes) and the benefits and harms of each product. Participants provided insights into why youth vape, describing vaping as an easily accessible coping method to help teens manage stress and anxiety. Peer normalization and invincibility beliefs about harms were also present. Participants generated ideas about prevention messaging, describing the ineffectiveness of prevention messages they currently receive, and expressing the need for accurate information about e-cigarette health risks presented in personalized, nonjudgmental contexts by people they know care about them. These results have clear implications for prevention initiatives and can be used to inform effective prevention strategies, messaging, programming, and policies, some of which are specific to e-cigarette prevention and others that align with the theory of positive youth development.

The Impact of Single-Container Malt Liquor Sales Restrictions on Urban Crime.

Many US cities have adopted legal restrictions on high-alcohol malt liquor sales in response to reports of crime and nuisance behaviors around retail alcohol outlets. We assessed whether these policies are effective in reducing crime in urban areas. We used a rigorous interrupted time-series design with comparison groups to examine monthly crime rates in areas surrounding alcohol outlets in the 3 years before and after adoption of malt liquor sales restrictions in two US cities. Crime rates in matched comparison areas not subject to restrictions served as covariates. Novel methods for matching target and comparison areas using virtual neighborhood audits conducted in Google Street View are described. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, sales of single containers of 16 oz or less were prohibited in individual liquor stores (n = 6). In Washington, D.C., the sale of single containers of any size were prohibited in all retail alcohol outlets within full or partial wards (n = 6). Policy adoption was associated with modest reductions in crime, particularly assaults and vandalism, in both cities. All significant outcomes were in the hypothesized direction. Our results provide evidence that retail malt liquor sales restrictions, even relatively weak ones, can have modest effects on a range of crimes. Policy success may depend on community support and concurrent restrictions on malt liquor substitutes.

Matching study areas using Google Street View: A new application for an emerging technology.

Google Street View (GSV) can be used as an effective tool to conduct virtual neighborhood audits. We expand on this research by exploring the utility of a GSV-based neighborhood audit to measure and match target and comparison study areas. We developed a GSV-based inventory to measure characteristics of retail alcohol stores and their surrounding neighborhoods. We assessed its reliability and assessed the utility of GSV-based audits for matching target and comparison study areas. We found that GSV-based neighborhood audits can be a useful, reliable, and cost-effective tool for matching target and comparison study areas when archival data are insufficient and primary data collection is prohibitive. We suggest that researchers focus on characteristics that are easily visible on GSV and are relatively stable over time when creating future GSV-based measuring and matching tools. Dividing the study area into small segments may also provide more accurate measurements and more precise matching.