Washington DC, The population of the United States grew by just 7.4 percent in the last decade, its second-slowest rate in any decade since the first Census was taken back in 1790. The only other decade with slower growth? The 1930s.
Six of the seven states that will lose a seat in Congress — Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — are in the Rust Belt. Five of those states, leaving West Virginia aside, have been losing seats for a long time.
Washington DC, according to the CDC ,about 1 in 59 eight -year-old children in 11 communities across the United States were identified as having autism in 2014, according to a report published today in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Surveillance Summary.
The data in this report come from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network – a tracking system that provides estimates of the prevalence and characteristics of autism spectrum disorder among more than 300,000 8-year-old children. ADDM is the largest population-based program to monitor autism and the only autism tracking system that examines health and education records.
The latest estimate of 1.7 percent (1 in 59) is higher than the previous ADDM estimate released in 2016, which found a prevalence of 1.5 percent or 1 in 68 children. Some of the change in prevalence could be due to improved autism identification in minority populations – although autism is still more likely to be identified in white children than in black or Hispanic children. This identification is important, because children identified early with autism and connected to services are more likely to reach their fullest potential.
“Autism prevalence among black and Hispanic children is approaching that of white children,” said Stuart Shapira, M.D., Ph.D., associate director for science at CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. “The higher number of black and Hispanic children now being identified with autism could be due to more effective outreach in minority communities and increased efforts to have all children screened for autism so they can get the services they need.”
The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network estimates are combined from 11 communities within Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. The 11 communities surveyed in this report represent about 8 percent of 8-year-old children in the United States.
Estimates of autism varied widely among the 11 communities in this report, although five reported similar estimates of 1.3 percent to 1.4 percent. The highest prevalence estimate of 2.9 percent came from a community in New Jersey. Some of the regional differences in autism prevalence estimates among the 11 communities might be due to differences in how autism is being diagnosed and documented.
More work needed to identify autism early in life
The data demonstrate that more work needs to be done to identify children with autism at a younger age and refer them to early intervention:
Fewer than half of the children identified in the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network received their first autism diagnosis by the time they were 4 years old.
Although 85 percent of children with autism had concerns about their development noted in their health records by the time they were 3 years old, only 42 percent received a developmental evaluation by that age.
This lag between first concern and first evaluation may affect when children with autism can begin getting the services they need.
“Parents can track their child’s development and act early if there is a concern. Healthcare providers can acknowledge and help parents act on those concerns. And those who work with or on behalf of children can join forces to ensure that all children with autism get identified and connected to the services they need as early as possible,” said Dr. Shapira. “Together we can improve a child’s future.”
CDC’s efforts to track autism and promote early identification
The next ADDM report will add data for children who were 8 years old in 2016 and help us better understand whether autism prevalence is changing and whether improvements are being made in early identification of autism. The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network is not a representative sample of the United States, but is a detailed look at autism in these specific communities. For more information about CDC’s autism activities visit www.cdc.gov/Autism.
CDC’s Learn the Signs. Act Early program provides parents, childcare professionals, and healthcare providers free resources, in English and Spanish, for monitoring children’s development. The program offers parent-friendly, research-based milestone checklists for children as young as 2 months of age. CDC’s Milestone Tracker Mobile App can help parents track their child’s development and share the information with their healthcare providers. For more information visit www.cdc.gov/ActEarly.
According to Katherine Loughead and Morgan Scarboro of the Tax Foundation public opinion increasingly favors the legalization of recreational marijuana, a growing number of states must determine how to tax legal sales of cannabis.
Will New Jersey Be next? One of the biggest signals of change has been the election of Democrat Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, and the incumbent Governor of New Jersey. He’s has already instilled a belief that New Jersey will embrace the plant recreationally.
To date, nine states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana, but only eight of these jurisdictions have legal markets. The table below highlights the states that have implemented legal markets and levy taxes on recreational marijuana.
Of the states with legal markets, Alaska is the only state that does not impose some form of sales tax on end-users. In each of the other states, taxes levied on the sale of marijuana far exceed the general sales tax rate levied by that state:
In Alaska, which has no states sales tax, marijuana growers pay a tax of $50 per ounce when selling the product to marijuana dispensaries or retailers. While the cost of taxes paid is passed on to customers in the form of higher prices, end-users do not pay a sales tax when purchasing marijuana.
In California, cultivators pay a per ounce of product tax at a rate of $9.25 per ounce of marijuana flowers and $2.75 per ounce of leaves. In addition, retailers collect from customers a 15 percent excise tax on the average market price of the product.
Colorado imposes a 15 percent excise tax on the sale of marijuana from a cultivator to a retailer. In addition, the state levies a 15 percent sales tax (up from 10 percent in 2017) on retail sales to customers.
Maine legalized recreational marijuana in 2016 by ballot initiative but has not yet established a legal market. Pending legislation would tax sales of marijuana at a rate of 10 percent and levy an excise tax on cultivators at a rate of $335 per pound of flower, $94 per pound of marijuana trim, $1.50 per immature plant or seedling, and $0.30 per seed. Governor LePage, however, has vowed to veto the legislation.
Massachusetts, concerned its previous ballot initiative approved rate of 3.75 percent was too low, raised the excise tax rate to 10.75 percent in 2017.
Nevada imposes an excise tax on the sale of marijuana by a cultivator to a distributor. This rate is set at 15 percent of the Fair Market Value as determined by the Nevada Department of Taxation. In 2017, Nevada created a new 10 percent sales tax paid by consumers.
Oregon, which does not have a general sales tax, levies a 17 percent sales tax on marijuana.
Washington levies a 37 percent sales tax on recreational marijuana.
Vermont legalized the possession of marijuana this year but did not create a legal market. D.C. also allows for possessing and growing of marijuana but does not allow for sales in a legal market.
Jeff Hunt is the vice president of public policy at Colorado Christian University.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has introduced the Marijuana Justice Act in an effort to legalize marijuana across the nation. This is the furthest-reaching legalization effort to date and marks another sad moment in our nation’s embrace of a drug that will have generational consequences.
Our country is facing a drug epidemic. Legalizing recreational marijuana will do nothing that Booker expects. We heard many of these same promises in 2012 when Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.
DENVER (CBS4) – An alert has been issued by the FBI to all law enforcement agencies in Colorado and Wyoming involving U.S. military families and concerns about who may be watching them.
The alert says Middle Eastern men are approaching families of U.S. military members at their homes in Colorado and Wyoming. It mentions Greeley and Cheyenne, Wyoming as the specific areas.
In one case last May the wife of a military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle Eastern males. The men stated that she was the wife of a U.S. interrogator. When she denied their claims the men laughed. The two men left the area in a dark-colored, four-door sedan with two other Middle Eastern males in the vehicle.
“The woman had observed the vehicle in the neighborhood on previous occasions,” the alert states.
Similar incidents in Wyoming have been reported to the FBI throughout June 2015.
“FBI Alert: Middle-Eastern Males Approaching Family Members of US Military Personnel,” Oodalooop, August 2, 2015
“In May 2015, the wife of a US military member was approached in front of her home by two Middle-Eastern males. The men stated that she was the wife of a US interrogator. When she denied their claims, the men laughed. The two men left the area in a dark-colored, four-door sedan with two other Middle-Eastern males in the vehicle. The woman had observed the vehicle in the neighborhood on previous occasions.
imilar incidents in Wyoming have been reported to the FBI throughout June 2015. On numerous occasions, family members of military personnel were confronted by Middle-Eastern males in front of their homes. The males have attempted to obtain personal information about the military member and family members through intimidation. The family members have reported feeling scared.
To date, the men have not been identified and it is not known if all the incidents involve the same Middle-Eastern males”
Chris Christie in no position to slam Colorado on cannabis
Pity the poor saps who live in the beautiful Rocky Mountain State, where voters decided in a referendum that marijuana should be legal, beginning this year.
Now their quality of life has deteriorated, according to our governor.
“See if you want to live in a major city in Colorado, where there are head shops popping up on every corner, and people flying into your airport just to get high,” Chris Christie said on a radio show Monday. “To me, it’s not the quality of life we want to have here in the state of New Jersey. And there’s not tax revenue that’s worth that.”
Of course, if Christie were truly concerned about quality of life, he would not have sabotaged our medical marijuana program with his foot-dragging, as patients wallow in chronic pain.
A New Jersey lawmaker has proposed a bill that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana like liquor, predicting we could raise $100 million a year in revenue. That’s certainly a big plus. Colorado collected more than $2 million in recreational pot taxes in January. (Star-Ledger Editorial Board)
