Type of therapy shows promise for OCD
UCLA researchers say people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who received intensive cognitive behavioral therapy showed both improvements in their symptoms and changes in their brains.
According to a study published in Translational Psychiatry, persons who underwent daily cognitive behavioral therapy had stronger connections between regions of their brains. That, researchers say, may indicate better communication between brain regions, along with the development of new, non-compulsive behaviors and thought patterns.
Researchers say the results strengthen the argument for making cognitive behavioral therapy more accessible to those with OCD, which affects about 1 in 50 Americans. —UCLA
thing, yet these states refuse to do it.”
Tax hikes as deterrents
In the 1980s, some states started aggressively raising cigarette taxes to combat smoking. Over the years, overwhelming research has proved it works. But there’s one wrinkle: The tax increase has to be large, or else it has little effect on smokers.
As a result, the battle has increasingly focused on not just whether states should increase taxes, but by how much.
Health advocates regularly fight for $1 to $2 increases, while cigarette companies push to limit them to hikes of 25 to 50 cents. That has led, at times, to bizarre conflicts.
Last year, when Missouri considered raising its cigarette tax for the first time in more than two decades, tobacco companies actually supported the increase, while health groups such as the American Cancer Society strongly opposed it.
The reason? The proposed increase was so low — either a gradual 23-cent hike or a 60-cent increase over four years — that researchers concluded smokers would pay it and keep smoking.
When tobacco companies supported the incremental tax increase in Missouri, health advocates accused them of using the small bump to avoid larger hikes in the future.
‘Nothing but the status quo’
Tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, which spent $12.5 million for the cause, denied that motive, saying it promoted the tax because it didn’t hurt consumers and retailers and because the money would go to a good cause — early-childhood education. “We thought it was a reasonable, common-sense proposal,” R.J. Reynolds spokesman David Howard said.
Ultimately, the tax proposal failed — becoming a Pyrrhic victory for health advocates and a new talking point for the tobacco company.
“I find it ironic that health groups didn’t support it,” Howard said. “Look at what happened as a result. Missouri still has the country’s lowest tax, and it’s nothing but the status quo.”
Almost every year, public-health advocates target states that seem particularly amenable to cigarette tax increases — where legislators face a revenue shortage or where polling shows growing support.
Health advocates often portray cigarette taxes as a win-win-win proposition. The taxes generate revenue for cash-strapped legislatures. They reduce states’ health-care costs. And they are incredibly effective at reducing smoking, especially among the most vulnerable groups: young people, pregnant women, low-income smokers and minorities. For every 10 percent increase in cigarette price, experts say, a state can expect an overall reduction in cigarette consumption of 3 to 5 percent and a greater reduction among youths of 6 to 7 percent.
Tobacco companies, however, paint such tax hikes as unfairly exorbitant, and their industry as overtaxed. They point out that from 2000 to 2014, federal and state cigarette taxes have been raised 120 times. They argue that higher taxes hit the pocketbooks of convenience store owners and smokers, and amount to a regressive tax on the poor.
But the most effective argument by tobacco companies has been the libertarian one: That adults should be free to choose whether to smoke and not be prodded into quitting by a nanny state.
“It’s essentially saying big government needs to make your decisions for you,” said Howard, the R.J. Reynolds spokesman, in a phone interview.
“Once upon a time, it used to be a bipartisan issue,” said Myers, who has campaigned for higher cigarette taxes for more than a quarter of a century. What changed was the rise of ideological figures such as Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and the no-tax pledges GOP officials were pressured to sign, he said.