Young adults who are casual smokers are 16 times more likely than nonsmokers to be hazardous drinkers and five times more likely to have alcohol-use disorders (AUDs), a U.S. study finds.
Sherry A. McKee, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and her colleagues analyzed data on 5,838 adults, aged 18 to 25, who provided information about their current smoking behavior, weekly consumption of alcohol, frequency of alcohol use, frequency of binge-drinking behavior, rates of hazardous drinking, and rates of AUD diagnoses.

"We anticipated that the associations between alcohol use and smoking would be greatest in non-daily smokers but were surprised by the degree of the associations," McKee said in journal news release about the study. "While casual smoking was more common in college students, the relationships between smoking and drinking behavior were the same for young adults whether they were students or not."

McKee noted that most states have implemented smoking bans that include businesses where alcohol is served.
"Research indicates that smoking bans can reduce alcohol consumption in bars, particularly among heavy drinkers," she said.

Obesity

America is in the top 10 fattest countries in the world (coming in at number 9). With more than 190 countries, we fall in the top 10....

74.1 % of America is overweight.

There are currently 1.6 billion overweight people in this world, and is expected to grow 40% within the next 10 years. These numbers are only taken from people who are 15 and older. Remember all those Maury shows that talk about the amount of obese children? Add all of those and we would probably have over 2 billion obese people in this world.

I believe that with children under 15 (I'm thinking more along the lines of age 12ish) the parents can mostly be to blame (discounting some deseases that may be cause the weight gain). Stop going to McDonalds every other day!
Most kids over the age of 15 (or 12) are now pretty much eduacted and should be able to control what they eat.
If the rest of the 180ish countries can handle obesity better, why cant we??