Warren Buffett's Brand-New Advice on How to Get Rich 03-01

Warren Buffett's Brand-New Advice on How to Get Rich

Two small investments Warren Buffett made more than two decades ago can teach us all something about how we should view our money.

Each year, investors anxiously await the annual report from Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A  ) (NYSE: BRK-B  ) , which contains a letter from Warren Buffett that containsindispensable insight into the decisions he's made both over the last year and his entire life.

While his letter for 2013 has yet to be released in its entirety, Fortune Magazine recently obtained an excerpt where Buffett outlines how two small real estate investments he made more than 20 years ago forever shaped his view on investing, but can prepare everyone for a future of success.

Source: Richard Hurd on Flickr.

The investments
Buffett describes his purchase of a 400-acre farm 50 miles north of Omaha, Neb., in 1986. Just a few years prior, farmland in Nebraska and the entire Midwest was booming, but a bursting of the bubble caused prices to decline rapidly. Buffett was able to buy the land for $280,000, which was "considerably less" than what a failed bank valued it a few years earlier.

While Buffett notes he "knew nothing about operating a farm," he enlisted the help of a son -- who was an avid farmer himself -- and the two estimated the return on the investment would be 10% annually.

He then describes the purchase of a "small investment" -- the price wasn't mentioned -- of a retail property in New York City that was next to New York University in 1993. He joined two other friends to buy the property following the collapse of the commercial real estate bubble and once again estimated he could earn about 10% each year.

Source: Insider Monkey.

As typical with Buffett, he is somewhat muted on what he has actually made from the initial investments, but notes, "The farm has tripled its earnings and is worth five times or more what I paid," and he now receives 35% of his initial investment in the real estate property annual in the form of distributions. 

Although the investments were small -- Berkshire Hathaway had a book value of more than $2 billion in 1986 and almost $9 billion in 1993 -- and he has never seen the property in New York and the farmland only twice, Buffett notes that "the two investments will be solid and satisfactory holdings for my lifetime and, subsequently, for my children and grandchildren."

The lessons
First, Buffett says, "You don't need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns," and a recognition of personal limits while ensuring things are kept simple navigating along a "course certain to work reasonably well" is critical.

He adds that when an investment decision is made, it's always critical to evaluate "future productivity" to determine if it's a worthwhile investment. If an investor is unable to gauge a "rough estimate" of what the future return of the investment is, Buffett says the best step is to simply "forget it and move on."

Source: Coca-Cola.

Buffett continues by highlighting that he focuses on productivity, not price, which is a critical distinction. Often investors are lulled into thinking it's only the price that matters, but prices are merely speculations of a value, whereas the productivity of a business is where the actual value is created.

The final lesson Buffett extols from these two small investments is that he didn't consider the broader macroeconomic or market predictions from others because those "may blur your vision of the facts that are truly important."

Next, he says speculation surrounding future price and daily prices are superfluous when making a decision. Again, he harps on the truth that he "thought only of what the properties would produce and cared not at all about their daily valuations."

Changing your life
In all five points, Buffett highlights things that can be taught to all investors, both those in real estate and those preparing for retirement through the stock market.

Investments are to be made in businesses that generate returns to their investors, not simply the names and numbers of stock tickers.

While it is easy to be swayed by daily trends, long-term investments at reasonable prices are always a winning formula. And if that sounds too daunting or difficult, Buffett says a very low-cost index fund is a wonderful solution.

Buffett concludes by reminding readers of his oft-repeated but immensely valuable advice he learned from his professor and mentor Ben Graham: "Price is what you pay; value is what you get," which is something everyone must remember when making any investment.

View at the original source

Why Half of Wal-Mart's Groceries Are Banned by Whole Foods 03-01

Why Half of Wal-Mart's Groceries Are Banned by Whole Foods

Ben Blatt of Slate magazine conducted an interesting and in-depth study recently to determine how many of the grocery products on a Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT  )  shelf are outright banned from the more upscale retailer Whole Foods Market  (NASDAQ: WFM  ) . The results might surprise you.

According to Blatt's research, Whole Foods bans roughly 54% of Wal-Mart's fare due to the presence, in its words, of "unacceptable ingredients for foods." These 78 banned ingredients include everything from recognizable sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup to the tongue-tying dimethylpolysiloxane.

In the process, Blatt left some cartons unturned, since Wal-Mart's website only discloses ingredients for approximately 50% of its grocery inventory. As a result, his survey is not scientific or comprehensive. Nevertheless, the findings are revealing for customers and investors alike.

Whole Foods store in Oklahoma City. Source: Whole Foods Market.

For example, it's no surprise that shoppers would be hard-pressed to find a liter of Coke or bag of Doritos at Whole Foods, but Blatt discovers that even household brands ranging from Minute Maid lemonade to Cracker Barrel cheese are deemed unworthy for Whole Foods' choosy clientele. Whole Foods claims these foods fall short of "safety, necessity, manufacturing methods and compatibility with our overall core values."

While the art of stocking retail shelves might seem quite mundane, the contrast presents two starkly different approaches to running a grocery store. Consider the following statistics:

• 97% of the soft drinks sold at Wal-Mart contain ingredients that Whole Foods considers "unacceptable." If you ever wondered why a Whole Foods drink aisle makes you feel like you're in a foreign country, well, there's your explanation.

• Wal-Mart's "Great Value 100% Whole Wheat Bread" contains seven ingredients that Whole Foods scoffs at, including everything from high-fructose corn syrup to calcium propionate. Not one or two "unacceptable" items, but seven. All in a staple product that you have to imagine just flies off the shelves. We're not talking about an obscure frozen dinner here; we're talking about sandwich bread.

• More than 80% of the candy sold at Wal-Mart would never be found at Whole Foods due to artificial flavors, while 31% of the bacon and sausage products have been blacklisted due to monosodium glutamate, or MSG.

The list goes on and on. Beyond the statistics, however, Blatt attempts to answer the intriguing question for customers and investors alike: Why does Whole Foods limit consumer choice?

As he points out, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed every food product sold in a Wal-Mart store safe for consumption. Whole Foods, however, holds itself to a higher standard. Is Whole Foods, then, playing the role of Big Brother for health-conscious customers or simply catering to the finicky demands of foodies?

Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU, was interviewed for Slate's article. She points the finger at health-conscious customers: "Whole Foods is giving their demographic what their demographic wants." The "top comment" in Blatt's piece -- which has so far collected more than 580 comments in total -- claims Nestle's conclusion is "the only relevant statement in the whole article." But is it really that cut-and-dry?

Not according to Whole Foods founder John Mackey. When he first started selling natural and organic foods at a small co-op in Austin, Texas, die-hard foodies were a blip on the radar in a massive national grocery industry. Now, the organic food industry, for example, is a $28 billion market that's more than doubled in size since 2004. This health-conscious trend didn't just spring out of thin air. For several decades, grocers like Whole Foods, recognized as America's first Certified Organic store, have ushered in a new wave of health-focused customers.

In the book he co-authored with Raj Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, Mackey claims that Whole Foods plays an important role in leading the consumer toward better choices. Instead of catering to the wants of consumers, Whole Foods educates -- without lecturing -- their clientele: "If the business is able to see unarticulated or latent needs that customers don't yet recognize, it has a responsibility to educate them about the potential value they are not yet seeing. ... We have to satisfy those customers in terms of what they want in the moment, while steering them toward better choices over time."

For Whole Foods, it's as much of a push from the grocer as it is a pull from the consumer to accommodate healthier food options. Mackey believes this makes sense because his grocers study everything from food to organisms to the environment and therefore have a deep understanding that customers might lack.

At the end of the day, it's always a dialogue between the two, but Mackey says a relationship built on trust has led customers to "increasingly look to Whole Foods Market to be their 'editors,' as we carefully examine and evaluate the products we sell." Or, to use another analogy, Whole Foods aims to maximize healthy outcomes for customers like a good mechanic would optimize the performance of an automobile.

As Whole Foods nudges the consumer to make better eating choices, it's in turn expanding that demographic. Their motto might as well be "Educate and they will come."

Produce aisle in Wal-Mart. Source: Wal-Mart.

But Wal-Mart's heading down a divergent path. From Blatt's point of view, the Bentonville retail giant offers a "laissez-faire" approach to curating the products it sells. Instead of banning ingredients, Wal-Mart's adopted a model for purchasing that provides lower prices and greater choice.

On the surface, this formula looks like a win-win for the consumer, but it comes with a small caveat: Shoppers are increasingly concerned about the ingredients and origins of food and are looking for guidance from a source they can trust. While no one wants their parent -- or grocer, for that matter -- telling them to eat their vegetables, many customers want to know that their grocer supports transparent and sustainable food practices. After all, their health and well-being depends, to a large extent, on the quality of foods in their diet.

Consequently, grocers who carefully monitor everything from ingredients to sourcing are riding on a wave of growth while others are lagging behind. The organic market, for example, makes up only 3.5% of total food sales, but it grew at double the annual growth rate of all food sales in 2012.

Grocers like Whole Foods and its natural-foods competitor Sprouts Farmers Market see increasing opportunity: Both stores recently upped their potential nationwide store count to 1,200 locations, which would triple Whole Foods' size and increase Sprouts' footprint by 7.5 times. While Wal-Mart towers above them with an estimated 3,000 grocery locations, its momentum is slowing. The world's largest retailer struggled to achieve 1.5% year-over-year global-revenue growth in the most recent quarter.

To reach its full potential, Whole Foods will likely continue to educate customers and may even ban a few ingredients along the way. For its part, that seems to be a time-tested recipe for success, translating to a seven-bagger stock over the last five years.

Wal-Mart, on the other hand, has to hope a cornucopia of products offers more for consumers than a carefully curated experience. From my perspective, focusing on rock-bottom prices looks less and less like a viable long-term strategy for the retail juggernaut.

Produce section in Whole Foods. Source: Whole Foods Market.

The future kings of retailThe face of retail is changing fast, and it's evident from the moment you step into a store. The best retailers are separating themselves from the pack through quality and service, while age-old veterans like Wal-Mart are struggling to compete on price alone. We recently surveyed the landscape and identified the cash kings trying to remove Wal-Mart from its throne.

View at the original source

Twitter ‘big data’ can be used to monitor HIV and drug-related behavior 03-01

Twitter ‘big data’ can be used to monitor HIV and drug-related behavior ·

SOCIAL

Real-time social media like Twitter could be used to track HIV incidence and drug-related behaviors with the aim of detecting and potentially preventing outbreaks, a new UCLA-led study shows.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Preventive Medicine, suggests it may be possible to predict sexual risk and drug use behaviors by monitoring tweets, mapping where those messages come from and linking them with data on the geographical distribution of HIV cases. The use of various drugs had been associated in previous studies with HIV sexual risk behaviors and transmission of infectious disease.

“Ultimately, these methods suggest that we can use ‘big data’ from social media for remote monitoring and surveillance of HIV risk behaviors and potential outbreaks,” said Sean Young, assistant professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-director of the Center for Digital Behavior at UCLA.

Founded by Young, the new interdisciplinary center brings together academic researchers and private sector companies to study how social media and mobile technologies can be used to predict and change behavior. (See the center’s Twitter account.)

Other studies have examined how Twitter can be used to predict outbreaks of infections like influenza, said Young, who is also a member of the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine; UCLA’s Center for HIV Identification, Prevention and Treatment Services; and the UCLA AIDS Institute. “But this is the first to suggest that Twitter can be used to predict people’s health-related behaviors and as a method for monitoring HIV risk behaviors and drug use,” he said.

For the study, researchers collected more than 550 million tweets between May 26 and Dec. 9, 2012, and created an algorithm to find words and phrases in them suggesting drug use or potentially risky behaviors, such as “sex” or “get high.” They then plotted those tweets on a map to discover where they originated, running statistical models to see if these were areas where HIV cases had been reported.

The algorithm captured 8,538 tweets indicating sexually risky behavior and 1,342 suggesting stimulant drug use. The geographical data on HIV cases to which researchers linked the tweets came from AIDSVu.org, an interactive online map that illustrates the prevalence of HIV in the U.S.; this mapping data was from 2009.

The states with the largest proportion of geo-located tweets, both general as well as HIV-related, were California (9.4 percent), Texas (9.0 percent), New York (5.7 percent) and Florida (5.4 percent). On a per capita basis, the largest raw number of HIV risk–related tweets came from the District of Columbia, Delaware, Louisiana and South Carolina. States with the highest per capita rate of tweets were Utah, North Dakota and Nevada.

When the researchers linked the tweets to data on HIV cases, they found a significant relationship between those indicating risky behavior and counties where the highest numbers of HIV cases were reported.

Based on this study, the researchers conclude that it is possible to collect “big data” on real-time social media like Twitter about sexual and drug use behaviors, create a map of where the tweets are occur and use this information to understand and possibly predict where HIV cases and drug use occur.

The study’s main weakness, the researchers say, is that the HIV data comes from 2009, so in order to test if this approach can be used to predict future behaviors and outbreaks there is a need for a “gold standard” of frequently updated data. In this way, tweets can be accessed instantly to compare them with disease outbreaks.

The study does however demonstrate the feasibility of using real-time social networking to identify and map HIV risk-related communications and link them to national HIV data, the researchers write.

“This study was designed to call for future research to understand the potential cost-effectiveness of this approach and to refine methods of using real-time social networking data for HIV and public health prevention and detection,” they conclude.

View at the original source

Strategic Humor: Cartoons from the April 2014 Issue 03-01

Strategic Humor: Cartoons from the April 2014 Issue

Enjoy these cartoons from the April issue of HBR, and test your management wit in the HBR Cartoon Caption Contest at the bottom of this post. If we choose your caption as the winner, you will be featured in the next magazine issue and win a free Harvard Business Review Press book.

“This passive-aggressive stuff is getting to me.”

P.C. Vey

---

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. I always leave a trail of breadcrumbs whenever I venture in there.”

Crowden Satz

---

And congratulations to our April caption contest winner, John Gregor of Edmonton, Alberta. Here’s his winning caption:

“Thanks for the dramatic reenactment of our quarterly growth chart, but you could have used PowerPoint.”

Cartoonist: Susan Camilleri Konar

---

NEW CAPTION CONTEST
Enter your own caption for this cartoon in the comments below — you could be featured in the next magazine issue and win a free book. To be considered for the prize, please submit your caption byMarch 13.

Cartoonist: Paula Pratt

View at the original source

Schoolboy, 4, over the moon with Nasa's help on his homework 02-27

Schoolboy, 4, over the moon with Nasa's help on his homework

Four-year-old Lucas Whiteley wrote to Nasa asking for help on a school project and became the star of his class when the space agency replied

It was one small step for a Nasa engineer but one giant leap for a four-year-old schoolboy from Yorkshire who wrote to the space agency asking for help with a science project.

Lucas Whiteley enlisted the help of his father to record a video of himself asking three questions which he posted on the Nasa website and was over the moon when the space agency replied.

He was sent a an email and 10-minute film from the space agency’s engineer Ted Garbeff which included a virtual tour of his Mountain View base in California.

Lucas presented the video to delighted teachers at Sunny Hill Primary in Wrenthorpe, West Yorks, who played it at the school assembly.

Mr Garbeff, an expert in experimental fluid physics who studies the wake of space capsules, answered Lucas’s queries about the number of stars, which countries had landed on the Moon and whether any animals had been there.

^{4 year old Lucas Whiteley got a detailed reply from NASA (Photo: Ross Parry)}

He explained the huge number of stars by comparing them to grains of sand on a beach.

“You might see a lot of stars, but the truth is there are more stars than you can even see,” he wrote.

“There are so many stars that it’s really hard to imagine how many there are.”

Mr Garbeff also told Lucas that the US was the only country to put a man on the moon but that Russia and then China had landed rovers and he described the role of animals in space exploration including Russian dog Laika, the first living thing to be sent into space.

Lucas’s father James Whiteley, 37, of Roberttown, West Yorks, said: “When I was a kid I wrote to

NASA and got a brochure, so when Lucas was doing a project on space I thought

we might be lucky if we sent a video of Lucas asking some questions.

“What we got back was amazing. Obviously Ted has thought about his audience and

gone to a lot of trouble just for them.

“When I sat down to watch it with Lucas he had a big smile on his face.

“Ted is a fantastic bloke to go out of his way to do something for someone he

doesn't know on the other side of the world.”

In his response to Lucas, Mr Garbeff claimed it had been difficult to get his job at NASA and urged Lucas and his classmates to listen to their teachers, adding he hoped to see them all "up in space one day."

He said the video had been "super fun" to make, "especially as Lucas asked such

great questions."

He added: "I'm always happy to talk about NASA."

Lucas’s questions and Mr Garbeff’s answers

Q: How many stars are there?

A: You might see a lot of stars, but the truth is there are more stars than you can even see. There are so many stars that it’s really hard to imagine how many there are. So we haven’t counted every single star in the universe, that would take a really long time. But instead engineers and scientists are really good at estimating really large numbers.

- he told Lucas there were about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

Q: Who came second and third in the race to the moon?

A: The US did land the first people on the moon and in fact no other country has made it back to the moon. But Russia did manage to land a rover on the moon to drive around. So I guess I would probably give Russia second place. Very recently, a country called China has landed a rover on the moon so China would have third place.

Q: Did any animals go to the moon?

A: No. But animals have really helped us understand the way space works and how well humans can live in space. In fact one of the first living things to go into space was a Russian dog named Laika. Laika’s now very much a space hero. She was the first living thing to go into space. Nasa also launched animals into space (including) the first primate, a chimpanzee named Ham. But none of them made it to the moon, they orbited around the Earth.

View at the original source

University education: steer towards a career 02-27

University education: steer towards a career

Universities and graduate recruiters are working together to maximise students’ chances of success in the jobs market.

Universities are focusing on easing the transition from study to employment 

With future job prospects high on most students’ list of concerns, universities are focusing on easing the transition from study to employment. Graduate recruiters, keen to snap up emerging talent, are following suit.

“Employers maintain that a degree is very valuable to them, and they’re increasingly looking to engage with students,” says Jane Goodfellow, head of careers and employability at Cardiff University.

According to Brian Staines, head of guidance services at the University of Bristol careers centre, “There’s more focus nowadays on questions of employability. Students want to know how their university careers service can help them get where they want to go.”

Thankfully, universities have strong answers. Besides running recruitment fairs, most organise workshops and offer careers advice services, including support in writing CVs and preparing for interviews.

Beyond this, many university careers centres are strengthening their relationships with industry, which requires graduates to have the right grades, soft skills and experience.

Companies including multinationals, public sector organisations, NGOs and SMEs across a range of sectors are therefore being invited on campus to run workshops and give talks addressing teamwork, leadership, time-management and other skills.

In the battle to help graduates win jobs, universities are also coming up with ever more inventive schemes.

At Cardiff, an alumni mentoring programme links successful graduates with students in their field, and panel-format events provide the chance to question employers in a specific sector. A growing number of institutions are also offering their own “employability award”.

Endorsed by recruiters, they enable students to gain a certificate by, for example, attending workshops, completing work experience and giving presentations. “Our award, Bristol Plus, can give job applications that added edge,” says Staines.

Creating a cycle of support, the University of Leeds careers centre helps entrepreneurial students start their own businesses via its Spark programme.

As well as supporting students in gaining access to grants and funding, it hosts events and modules to get them started, offers advice and mentoring, and provides access to resources. In return, once up and thriving, these new businesses hire younger Leeds students as interns and graduate recruits.

As Dr Bob Gilworth, director of the University of Leeds careers centre, puts it: “Setting up internship opportunities with SMEs is great, but how about giving students a hand to set up the SMEs in the first place?”

Former students Becky Edlin, 26, and Gerard Savva, 29, have proved the project’s success. They started their design and marketing service, Magpie Comms, in 2009. Initially benefiting from Spark support, they now provide opportunities for the next crop of students.

“There’s no shortage of students who want enterprising careers,” says Chris Phillips, UK information and research director at GTI Media, a graduate careers media company. He advises undergraduates to look beyond the obvious recruiters and consider smaller, high-growth businesses, as they “often give earlier responsibility and greater autonomy”.

In companies both big and small, however, internships can lead to great things. During her aeronautical engineering degree at Imperial College London, Zoe Versey, 24, did a summer internship at Jaguar Land Rover.

She enjoyed the experience, and secured a place on its graduate scheme. “Completing my final year at uni with a job lined up meant I could concentrate on exams,” says Versey.

The internship has also helped to make sense of her academic studies, allowing her to “apply things I had learnt on my degree to a work environment”.

This practical application of university teaching has long since been the aim of vocational degrees — many of which are developed and imparted by industry partners.

The IT Management for Business (ITMB) degree, for example, is run by 20 universities in conjunction with E-skills UK and supported by 60 employers, among them Hewlett Packard, ITV and the Cabinet Office.

“It’s about building relationships between students and employers,” says Irina Fotache, 22, who is on a placement at CA Technologies as part of her University of Manchester ITMB. “I’ve met potential employers from day one; it’s great for developing a strong professional network.”

Overall, the increasingly productive relationships between universities and employers allow students to build skills, contacts and experience before hitting the jobs market.

“Research shows that students who undertake work experience and consider their employability carefully make better career decisions and have better employment prospects,” says Good fellow.

View at the original source

How to lead the student from the wrong answer to the correct one? 05-11

With up to 10 new designer drugs every year, more education is needed to convey risks ·0-7

With up to 10 new designer drugs every year, more 

education is needed to convey risks ·

In the span of a decade, Canada has gone from ecstasy importer to global supplier of the illegal party drug. At the same time, even newer designer highs—sometimes just a mouse-click away—are flooding the drug market faster than legislation can keep pace.

It’s a worrying problem that University of Alberta researchers say requires more education to help Canadians understand the very real, deadly risks of designer drug use.

“The chemists who are making these drugs are coming up with about 10 new drugs per year; the legislation cannot keep up with the market,” said Alan Hudson, a pharmacologist at the U of A who studies how ecstasy and other drugs affect brain neurochemistry. “The best way forward is to educate people that they’re playing Russian roulette—the health risks from taking these drugs are high, and potentially lethal.”

In a new paper published in Drug Science, Policy and Law, Hudson and his U of A co-authors—Maggie Lalies, Glen Baker, Kris Wells and Katherine Aitchison—warn the recreational drug scene is growing in Canada, fuelled by an appetite for designer drugs and legal highs such as K2, spice, Benzo fury, Barts, Homers, bath salts, plant food and other “party pills.”

“This is a pressing public health issue,” said Wells, director of programs and services with the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services. “The profile that we’re seeing of someone taking ecstasy or these so-called recreational drugs is not perhaps your average user when we think of drug use. It could be one of our own university students going to a party on the weekend—where they haven’t experimented before—and then take a tablet of ecstasy. It doesn’t have an effect and they take another one; pretty soon they’re in emergency fighting for their life.”

Designer highs, massive profits

Newer designer drugs, often purchased online from Asia, can represent big business in Canada.

“For some of these legal highs, you only need a milligram to get high,” Hudson said. “If you can buy a kilogram for $200, the mark-up can be huge.”

Although Health Canada statistics show ecstasy use is down slightly among young people across the country, a 2006 report from the RCMP shows Canada has become a “major production and export country,” a situation that developed over just two years and a significant departure from the mid-1990s, when Canada was an import-consumer nation.

During the same time, Hudson notes, ecstasy has become increasingly toxic, cut with a mix of, at times, deadly chemicals. In a 2007 Health Canada study, only three per cent of seized ecstasy tablets contained pure MDMA, the drug’s main ingredient, compared with 69 per cent in 2001.

Two such contaminants are PMA and PMMA; the latter may cause severe serotonin toxicity and has been linked to as many as eight deaths in Alberta over the past two years. Hudson and his colleagues caution that even pure ecstasy can have toxic side-effects that vary by individual, due to genetic factors.

“There is no safe dose of ecstasy,” Hudson explained.

Rise of legal highs

Head shops and online operators have increasingly turned to peddling legal highs such as BZP and TFMPP, often sold as “party pills,” “Barts” or “Homers” for shapes resembling characters from the Simpsons TV show. Both ingredients were declared illegal in 2012, but have given way in popularity to newer drugs such as “plant food” or bath salts, which have been sold legally as variants of mephedrone, methylone and MDPV—the latter of which is known for inducing a “zombie-like” state and paranoia.

The federal government banned the drug, but Hudson said there will always be others like Benzo fury and various online options to take their place, underscoring the need for more education.

Research grounded in the community

In their efforts to raise awareness, the research team has forged relationships in the community, including the Edmonton Police Service.

Wells co-chairs the Chief’s Advisory Council, a role that helped facilitate access to newer drugs for research, and his work at iSMSS puts him in constant contact with at-risk youth. Sexual and gender minority youth are three times as likely to take drugs and alcohol as negative coping mechanisms, he said, which underscores the importance of creating positive environments that help youth feel supported, and allowing them to make informed, hopefully healthy decisions.

“It’s about taking the research to the next level—communicating it, mobilizing the knowledge to all the stakeholders and, ultimately, to all those young people who may be facing a choice in their lives,” Wells said.

When youth do turn to drugs, Hudson said, parents can turn to resources offered by  Alberta Health Services and look for warning signs such as

• depressed moods after the weekend (a common symptom of coming down from euphoric highs of ecstasy)
• mood changes, often associated with drugs such as K2 or spice
• sudden nosebleeds, from snorting designer drugs such as plant food

This U of A research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Government of Alberta.

View at the original source