This episode of the Stan State EduCast features Dr. Koni Stone (Professor of Biochemistry, Instrumental Analysis) and Dr. José Díaz-Garayúa (Associate Professor of Human Geography, Geographic Information Systems and co-Director of the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis).
Dr. Stone and Dr. Díaz-Garayúa join host Frankie Tovar to share their expertise on the topic of vaping, the nicotine delivery method that has gained popularity with both children and adults. The trio discuss the dangers of vaping from a scientific standpoint, the role of the Smoke and Vape Free Scholars Initiative on demographic research, and the overall influence of the tobacco industry.
Dr. Koni Stone: https://www.csustan.edu/people/dr-koni-stone
Dr. Jose Diaz-Garayua: https://www.csustan.edu/geography-environmental-resources/dr-jose-r-diaz-garayua
Smoke and Vape Free Scholars Initiative: csustan.edu/casa/svfsi.
Produced by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, edited and recorded in the KCSS studios on the campus of Stanislaus State.
This episode of the Stan State EduCast features Dr. Koni Stone (Professor of Biochemistry, Instrumental Analysis) and Dr. José Díaz-Garayúa (Associate Professor of Human Geography, Geographic Information Systems and co-Director of the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis).
Dr. Stone and Dr. Díaz-Garayúa join host Frankie Tovar to share their expertise on the topic of vaping, the nicotine delivery method that has gained popularity with both children and adults. The trio discuss the dangers of vaping from a scientific standpoint, the role of the Smoke and Vape Free Scholars Initiative on demographic research, and the overall influence of the tobacco industry.
Dr. Koni Stone: https://www.csustan.edu/people/dr-koni-stone
Dr. Jose Diaz-Garayua: https://www.csustan.edu/geography-environmental-resources/dr-jose-r-diaz-garayua
Smoke and Vape Free Scholars Initiative: csustan.edu/casa/svfsi.
Produced by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing, edited and recorded in the KCSS studios on the campus of Stanislaus State.
The fight for a tobacco free society, specifically when it comes to children, has been waged in the US for more than 25 years. Through various initiatives and marketing campaigns, this crusade has successfully reduced youth smoking by 89% and adult smoking by 49% since 1996. It's crucial to focus on the word smoking, however, when it comes to these statistics. While it's true that fewer people are lighting up cigarettes compared to past generations, the consumption of nicotine, the addictive and poisonous chemical found in tobacco, has not necessarily dropped. And it's all thanks to the new method of choice when it comes to getting that nicotine fix. Vaping. Commercially introduced to the US in 2006, ecigarettes and vaping devices have become wildly popular with both children and adults. In a recent Gallup poll, 8% of Americans reported having used vaping devices in the last week. And according to the Truth Initiative, a shocking 800,000 teens admitted to vaping between 2021 and 2022. I'm Frankie Tovar, your host for this episode of the Stan State Educast, and today we're shining a spotlight on the issue of vaping, exploring its health implications and the demographics it affects. Joining us for this discussion are two esteemed professors from the university, Dr. Koni Stone and Dr. Jose Diaz-Garayua. You're listening to the Stan State educast produced on the campus of Santa Sauce State. Dr. Koni Stone. Dr. Jose Diaz Garayua. Welcome to the Stan State Educast. Hello, I'm Dr. Koni Stone, professor of chemistry at Stan State. My PhD research at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, focused on studying how a small molecule causes colorectal cancer. We were interested in understanding how diets that are high in polyunsaturated fats are associated with an increased risk for colorectal cancer. For my postdoctoral studies, and that's what you do when you have to learn how to write grants and increase your publication record and how to survive on ramen noodles. I did that at LSU, and we studied how some of the polyphenolic molecules in tar that came from cigarette smoke caused dna damage. I've continued that work at CSU Stan for almost 30 years, and we've discovered that secondhand smoke, that's the stuff that comes off the end of the cigarette and out of the smoker's lungs. And third hand smoke, that's the stuff that's in clothing, drapes and carpet have the same dna damaging molecules. Then we moved into studying vape, and my students showed that vapor contained high levels of aldehydes, while they didn't have the same dna damaging activity of the cigarette tar. They have some aldehydes that undergo some very interesting and very toxic chemistry. So my research started with an aldehyde to colorectal cancer studies, and now I'm back to aldehydes, looking at how dangerous they are for your lungs. Thank you, Frankie, for having me here. I am Dr. Jose Diaz Garayua. I am a broadly trained applied geographer. I am associate professor of geography and codirector of the center for Applied Spatial Analysis, where I'm leading a series of research projects with around ten students. Among those projects is the smoke and vape freeze color initiative. I am part of a multidisciplinary group studying this phenomenon of smoke and vaping while preparing the next generation of tobacco control professionals. And before people start to ask what a geographer is doing here, I just want to put on the record that geographers can solve problems. If you remember Covid-19 all those maps, stats, dashboard, that is one of the things that we do. Excellent. So you'll be able to address the demographics affected by this issue. And, Connie, obviously you'll be able to talk about the health implications. A lot of technical jargon in your intro. I would expect nothing less from a chemistry aficionado. In layman's terms, what is vaping? How would you describe it for someone who doesn't have the chemistry expertise? So, vaping is aerosolizing the nicotine product. So instead of burning a plant molecule like you would burn a flame, this uses electricity to excite the molecules into the gas phase that then go into the lungs. So does that do it for you? Yeah, I think so. We're heating a liquid, and, like, when you boil water, you heat up the water, and then you get steam. We're doing this with a little electric cartridge to get this aerosol into the lungs. The entire marketing point for vaping is that it's safer than cigarettes. Is that true? No, it is not safer. It's different. It's got a different kind of danger, but it is not safer. That's the perception that it's safer. We're starting to see students from middle school doing it. So that is me with the SVFSI, the smoke and vape free Scholar initiative. The demographics you're looking at, you mentioned middle school to high school. Are you focusing on age only, or what other type of demographics are you looking for? Well, what we are doing in this project is we are preparing the next generation of tobacco control advocates and workers, professionals to combat tobacco. Now, what we are doing is bringing to the table. Students from across all majors. We have students from biology. We have students from nursing, public health promotion, so on and so forth. They take classes. They are taking an honor class. We are doing a local research project. Obviously, I'm biased because I'm geographer. And we are taking a look of dispatcher distribution of these stores. They are also being matched with UC Merced research group, and also they are being matched to health department. We have six counties working with us. So the idea is that after the program, they will continue working in this area or they are going to continue grad studies. So we have some students that have been working. We are in our second cohort, from our first cohort, we have students working in the health services agency in Stanislaw county and other students that are going to grad school. So I think that we are having some results right now. What is maybe one of the most shocking or interesting things that the initiative has kind of discovered in terms of the demographics of vaping use? One of the things that in my case, I have gotten aware is that we have middle school children vaping. I mean, this is really alarming. In fact, I think that some of my students were saying that there are some schools that have an alarm in their bedrooms because they go to the bathroom to vape. The FDA says that vaping products by american teams, the usage of it rose 400% between 2019 and 2020. That is alarming. Connie, what are the implications for young people vaping so early and so often? Talk about nicotine, the elephant in the room. So nicotine is the hook, the addictive substance, and it's highly addictive. It binds tighter to the reward center molecule in the brain than heroin. So just keep that in mind. The younger a person is that gets exposed to nicotine, the harder it is to quit, the more programmed the brain becomes to this addiction. So there's that. And the tobacco companies have known about that since the, they started marketing to children, to nine and ten year olds starting in the late 70s, because they know this fact of getting more customers. Right. So there's that problem, the addictive thing. And nicotine is not a safe molecule. It's associated with all sorts of cardiovascular, heart disease, stroke, cancers. It's not a nice molecule. So there's that. But there's also a tremendous amount of damage that can occur to the lungs because of the other molecules that are present in the vape that become aldehydes. So it starts off with something that's fairly innocuous, propylene glycol and glycerin neither one of those molecules is very toxic in and of themselves, but when you heat them up and breathe them in with the nicotine, then all of a sudden you're making a bunch of aldehydes. And those aldehydes can react with molecules in your lungs to cause lung damage. And then your immune system gets involved. It says, hey, there's danger, there's damage, and it goes into overdrive because of these aldehydes and causes something called fibrosis, which is an overgrowth of tissue on top of your lung cells. And pretty soon, the oxygen cannot get to the lung cells. So that's happening in our children, and we've already seen some cases where 20 year olds had to have lung transplants because there was so much damage. And are those effects only if you begin at a young age? Are adults in the clear if they're like 30 or 40 in vaping? No. That lung damage will happen no matter what age you are. But it's particularly harmful for small children who are still growing and developing. So children, they produce a lot more protein anyway because they're growing. Once you get older, you stop making so much protein. So there's that. So a little more susceptible to it. But that damage happens at any age. There are a plethora of vaping devices. It's evolved a lot since 2006. Very concealable, very small, easily pocketed. Is that one of the reasons why it's so prevalent amongst the youth? You, Jose, you provided me with a graphic before this podcast showing some of the different devices available to vape. When you think that something is a sharpie, for example, but it's a vape, then you have to question, what's the marketing strategy here? Things that might look like makeup or USB drive that you can connect in the computer to charge. Right. This raise flag. And it's not just the form of the delivery device. Right. There's also a plethora of flavors when it comes to vaping. How does that affect the youth demographics who are using these products? That's correct. Like 90%. I believe that they are doing it because the flavor. Right. So that is a factor that they are attracted to vape. There was some legislation done in the 90s, right, to eliminate flavored tobacco to some degree. Is there any legislation or any efforts made to try and reduce the flavored vaping products available? I thought there was, but let me tell you about the rabbit hole. I went down with watermelon. There's 51 chemicals that give you watermelon flavor, 51 of them. And a lot of them are aldehydes. And when you eat these aldehydes, no problem, because your stomach will digest them, and then your liver will take care of anything else. But when you breathe in those aldehydes. So here's a molecule that's good going down the tongue and into the stomach, but when it goes into the lungs, it causes all sorts of damage. So these flavoring agents, while present in much less amounts than the acryl, and that bad aldehyde that comes from the vaping matrix, these flavoring agents are also bad molecules. And there's, like I said, 51 of them that give you the watermelon flavor, and they won't tell you which ones are in the vape. So I went trying to figure out, no, that's all proprietary, so you don't know which aldehydes are in there. So that's the next thing we're going to be looking at. We know there's aldehydes, but we're going to actually then go a step further and try to identify the actual aldehydes that are in some of these flavoring. And we can still buy them. The watermelon, the bubble gum, we can still buy them. So I don't know. And then here's another fun fact. The zero nicotine that have those flavors are not zero nicotine. They have nicotine in them. Small amounts, below whatever the threshold is for the law. But there is small amounts of nicotine in them. I think there's up to 5% nicotine varying from device to device. Right. But why would you even have to have it in there? You have to add it in. How does that amount of nicotine compare to the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, do you know? Oh, it's much, much less, however, any bit to get the person hooked. Right. And then you need more and more and more. I think I read somewhere that somebody has 254 puffs a day. That's a lot of puffing, right? Absolutely. How can you not notice it? And then I don't know if you've been around vape and smelled it, but there's like this burnt meat smell, and it is, it's the molecule that you're smelling is called acrylin, and it comes from burnt meat or charred things, which is a carcinogen. If you smell it, run the other way. So it almost sounds like the flavored vapes are more dangerous than, say, a straight non flavored. I would go with that, yes. Because of the aldehydes. What other results have you seen from this initiative? Jose? When I start to do the research with my students, we are starting to take a look where these tobacco shops, they're located and we can have an idea. They tend to be located in non white neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, and they are exposed. Not just we can say, well, it's a store, but when you walk front of the store, you are going to see all this advertisement in neighborhoods that are poor. The advertisement is more kind of in your face, right? You might go to other neighborhoods. The advertisement is more subtle. There is a 2020 article, tactics for drawing youth to vaping content analysis of electronic cigarette advertisement that found tangible strategies employed by ecigarette companies to recruit youth into vaping. For example, advertisements also frequently included narrations and taglines related to the product. Phrases include take back your freedom, make the swish satisfying. Is that simple and real. Draw, real taste, real satisfaction. Common words and phrases include 100% flavor satisfaction, at last, real satisfaction and a truly satisfying taste. And encourage consumers to draw and taste the array of flavors. Additionally, companies like blue, Yule, vero and BChic presented their product as an alternative to smoking and included phrases like make the switch and rise from the ashes. Again, an important factor is how these commercials appeal to youth curiosity, this being a predictor of youth starting to vape. What other studies have found is that this advertisement is found also inside the store or visible from the sidewalk in some places because we don't have commercials right in tv or radio about this. But this is one of the reasons that in right, you should not have advertisement visibles from the sidewalk. It sounds like these tobacco companies have a leg up when it comes to advertising or marketing and a lot of money at their disposal. A lot of resources. Connie, you told me a little bit before this podcast about an experience you had with that. Oh yes, they have a boatload of resources and they're not afraid to use them. So you want to hear my little story? This is back in the 90s when I was postdocting and we had developed an assay to measure dna damaging activity, which is the first step towards developing a cancer. And we had this assay. It took us nine months to make it all work and get reproducible results, and the tobacco company wanted us to go there and show them how to do it. And I said, well, I'm not getting on a plane because I was just like, no, I'm not going to help them because they were trying to prove that their safer cigarette, which is the first one, the picture that you showed, that was that first ecigarette back in the. So they were very insistent, and they had just bucket loads of money that my advisor, my postdoc advisor, was very interested it in eyes lit up with the dollar signs. And so they came out to us, and I'm like, well, okay, I wanted to keep my ramen noodle flow coming, right? My little bit of money. So we showed them the assay, and the people were really nice. I mean, they're great to work with. They would have been great colleagues. But I just kept thinking, how do they sleep at night? And I asked them, I go, what are you doing here? Wow, we're making a safer cigarette. And I'm like, there is no such, dang it. Still got nicotine in it. Oh, they were just convinced, right? So anyway, that was my story with them having a lot of money and getting what they wanted. And of course, they did not publish their results, but we showed that when you heat the tobacco, you don't get the tar, and the tar is what we were looking for as far as causing the dna damage that leads to cancer. So there's that story, but that doesn't address the whole nicotine toxicity. Nicotine is an insecticide. So think about that. You are putting an insecticide in your lungs. Do you go out in the garage and sniff your malathion? Probably not, right? That's my corollary. Right. I don't know what half those words mean, but they sound alarming. Right. We've been focusing a lot on nicotine tobacco, but another big industry is the cannabis industry, and that's very, very prevalent when it comes to vaping as well. What's the difference between vaping tobacco and nicotine as compared to vaping marijuana? Well, you're getting a different active ingredient, so you're getting tetrahydro cannabis delta nine. How's that? Right. That's a THC. That's the active ingredient that makes the world look better. And everything's funny, and you want to eat more. So you're getting that and you're breathing it in, but you're also breathing in all of those glycerin and the carrier molecules that make the vape come through, and that you're getting the aldehydes. And in fact, there were some cases where they were putting this diacetyl into the marijuana cartridges. And the diacetyl has been associated with something called popcorn lung, where people who. And thanks, Jose, for getting me down that rabbit hole. Popcorn lung came about with people who were working in the microwave popcorn factories, and they would put this molecule, which is safe to eat, but it is not safe to breathe. And the workers there were coming up with lungs that had holes in them, and those holes were coming from fibrosis, which is from the diacetyl, which is what they put in some of the marijuana cartridges. And they think that that is probably why. I think there were two patients in 2020 that needed lung transplants from marijuana exposure via vaping. So it's not good either. Would you say the cannabis vaping is equally as dangerous, less dangerous, more dangerous than tobacco nicotine for some reason? I think it's more dangerous. Just from what I've read. I would say it's more dangerous. There are other ways to get your THC if you need them. And how about prevalency? Has the initiative you've been working with focused on that as well? This grant is just about smoking and. Vaping, so let me help you out with that. We're federally funded. We cannot engage in any activity that is research centered around THC. My lab cannot do it either. And I'm sure that's why you are limited by your tobacco, but you don't want to be engaged. The university is federally funded. We don't want to endanger the NSF and the NIH funding and our mark grant and all that by engaging in activities that are related to. It's still schedule one. For what reason, I don't know. So we cannot. Well, I'm sure if that changes, there's ample opportunity and ample research and stats out there for you to kind of dive into. Right. So we can't get the cannabis cartridges, but I can tell you that we did do a tiny bit of work with. We kind of made our own thing with some hemp. So hemp just doesn't have the THC in it, but it's the same plant material, and the results were not all that conclusive. In fact, we weren't able to publish on that, but we were trying. We're trying to work around that. I would just really like it to deschedule it, move it down so that we can look at this and show that it's not good for you in a very real. Instead of me just saying it, you'll need a lung transplant. Yeah. That's a good deterrent. Right? Right. So cigarettes are bad for you, vaping is bad for you. What is the alternative for people out there who want to consume tobacco or maybe even want to consume nicotine? The patch, you can't take nicotine orally. It gets degraded, so you can't eat it. Unlike THC, you can eat THC and get the biological response from THC, you can eat it. Nicotine, you can't eat. Your liver will eat the. Chop it away before it gets anywhere near. So one of the reasons why people like to inhale things is that it goes right to the brain. I mean, it's really right close. Right. It goes right to the brain. No going through the circulatory system. So that's why it's a little bit longer response. If you're wearing a tobacco patch or if you're, there are some sublingual, there's chewing Gum. There's other ways to get nicotine if you must, but I'm going to recommend against that, too. Well, patches and nicotine gum don't seem as cool. Right. And that's a big factor into why these young people consume or use vapes. Right. Is the coolness or the appeal of using vapes. It starts out that way, and then I think they get addicted, and then they're just doing 235 puffs. They don't care who sees them. I think that is a way, like, to socialize, but your lungs are made to breathe air, not to put any other stuff inside. One of our students, he's a student from the social work program. He's joining researchers from UCSF. And this is what they are looking. They are looking at establishment in the area that provide this type of treatment. So a lot of talk about teenagers, middle school, high school. But this is a university with a lot of young adults who undoubtedly vape as well. Any research into that demographic? Yes. Last year, the first cohort were doing observational research, and they're looking at some populations here in the university that will vape or smoke. And there were, I think, a couple areas in which that happened, obviously, because Irb, I cannot tell you more specific, but yes, we have cases even that our university is smoke free, right? Yes. And vape free. Vape free, of course. Tobacco product free. A battle I fought for many, many years before you could stand outside the building and puff away. Yeah, they finally got it. So you have to be off the campus. You have to be all the way to the sidewalk. You cannot be in the parking lot. So finally, right, we can thank President John for finally, or maybe the CEO. The CEO might have done it to all 23 campuses. But what I saw, I saw my daughter went to UC Santa Cruz, and there was a big sign right at the opening of the UC Santa Cruz, smoke free, no buildings, no property, no parking lots. And I took a picture of that and sent it to President Joan eventually. All right, well done. 30 years of progress is often slow. Right. Isn't it, though? You just have to keep chipping away at it. And so one of the things that does decrease use is taxes. So more taxes. Right. Those taxes are what's winning your grant. Yeah. Right. Because that's a deterrent. They've shown that the cost of the product greatly reduces the access to young. People, but that create other problems, like getting small doses that you shall not sell individually. Then you can deal with that in the parking lots, for example. How do we have really? Yeah, obviously, middle school, high school students, they can't walk into a store and legally buy these products. So how are they getting their hands on these vape pens? Maybe older friends, maybe a guy parking a red car beside the park. I don't know. That's a good question. How they get it every three years. I believe that there is this survey going on, and one of the things that they are doing is going to the store to see if they ask for an id. Right. Because we have information that some stores, they don't do that. So that's the other way. Right. I look to the other side and then I sell you my product. And again, probably stores that are located in lower income areas, I would assume, right? Yeah. For the initiative, is there anything that you really want to share that we haven't touched on? I mentioned this at the beginning, but the smoke and Bay free Scholar initiative role in this is multifold. First, our scholar conduct research as a part of an honor course. As a geographer, of course, I am interested in uncovering patterns of tobacco retailer location. As part of the activities, we go to the field to record classified and clean areas of tobacco waste. Second, we assign our students to UC Mercedes research group where they can join related research such as water pollution due to tobacco waste, among others. And third, our students get hands on experience because we assign them to work at a public health department. With this experience, we attempt to encourage our students to continue the area of tobacco control for graduate school or a career after graduation. What's on the horizon for the initiative? What are you working on currently? Anything that you can tease as far. As the work when we start to do this, actually Stenstate was the first on all the universities starting the project because we decided to start on fall. So we are in a second cohort. We have funds for a third cohort we will be working on try to get more funds to keep this going. But one of the goals that we have was to see that those students will continue working in this area. And so far, we start to see the results. Some of them working in public health education and others going to grad school related to this area of tobacco control. And what about students who are interested in joining the initiative or participating? How can they do that? Where can they get that information? So every spring we release an application, and students generally that are in the third four that are going to the third or fourth year can apply. And also students that are transfer coming to stan state can apply. And we will have it in our website ready for next semester, which is www.csustan.edu/casa/sdfsi. And we'll include that in the episode description for everyone to find. Easier to read than listen. And I think sometimes. How about you, Koni? What's the future hold for you? Your research, what you're focusing? Well, like I said, we're still in the vape, and we're going to go find out what all those aldehydes are, identify them. We know they're there. We've done assays for that. The thing that I wanted to close with is another rabbit hole I went down. There were lots of them for this project. But the tobacco companies, they have all this flavor expertise because of all those words that Jose was using about satisfying and good flavor and all that. They really are experts on getting people to try their product, and then their product does all the work. The nicotine is, again, highly, highly addictive. And then you think you have free will, but when your brain is addicted to nicotine, you don't. And so this causes a whole bunch of socioeconomical problems because it's very expensive to keep this habit alive. And you're giving money to the man, as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, there was a recent Washington Post article that described how they bought up hawaiian punch Oreos, Mac and cheese, and then they reformulated them to be more addictive to our pleasure centers, the more satisfying Mac and cheese. Right. And then sell more product. And so their marketing and their flavor manipulation, coupled with some shenanigans from the sugar market that gave us cheap, high fructose corn syrup, is what has us fighting the public health crisis of obesity and type two diabetes. So there's your next podcast. What not to eat. Yeah, I think that's a big topic as well. Based on what you just said, though, can you provide any projected long term trends based on this? Long term trends for the tobacco companies, where they're going now vaping. You mentioned flavoring. Flavoring, right. It's the whole flavoring thing and trying to get people addicted to the nicotine. And the reason why the ecigarettes, the first generation, didn't work and why they gave up on it, they were a little bit safer. They didn't have the tar. However, they didn't deliver the nicotine, so they sideblind it until Juul came up with the idea of the vapor. And that vapor delivers nicotine like you would not believe. Now, just to clarify, it's not safer, but less damaging? No. It causes a different kind of damage. And so we don't know if it causes cancer, because that takes 20 to 30 years to figure out. But we do know that it causes lung fibrosis, so similar to the kind of fibrosis that happened in COVID patients. And that can be caused death, and it can cause death in young people. So we cannot use safer. No, we cannot. The only damage, the only thing is that tastes better, right? I don't know. No, I think it smells horrible. Yeah, I hate the smell. I cannot stand it. You have all these flavors, and that's why people think that is safer, but it is not. If you had to provide an argument against vaping based on your research, what would be your singular message? Stick to the facts. People sometimes can see the true underface, but they just want to believe what they want to believe. And that's the problem. If you have the facts, the scientific facts, then you know that that's damaging for you, for your body. I think that it's as simple as that. I'll go with the same thing. Right. And the thing is that people who are educated are much less likely to be smokers and to use tobacco products. So there is a socioeconomic and education factor that's in there. And being able to think for yourself. Right. Which tobacco, which nicotine can take away from you, especially if you start young. That's why they market to nine and ten year olds. Yes. That cute little camel was not for grown ups. Education is the answer. I believe so. Education. I like the youth outreach, the young people going in and young people talking to young people. College students talking to other college students. Right. Rather than me, the grizzled one, telling him, bad for you. It is scary to think that kids, students in any given junior height, are using these devices designed not just to attract the attention of children, being colorful and with flavors, but also to conceal, to hide in plain sight. As a USB memory, as I was mentioning before, Sharpie or as a toy. It is obvious how companies are targeting children and how in the end, the individual is being blamed as this situation occurs in a vacuum. Right? The companies are doing this, but then they blame the individual as something with no context. That's also the scary part as parents. Also, we have to take a look on those sharpies now, right? Less than 20 years from the introduction commercially of the first vape. So a lot of great research and work so far, but obviously there's still more to come. So I'll be interested to kind of keep an eye on that from work from both of you two and then other colleagues, other students who go on to do that as well. So again, a very interesting and pertinent topic right now. So I'd like to thank you both for joining me on the stats at educast. And I'll give you one final opportunity if you have any final closing thoughts you'd like to leave us with. It's bad for you. Don't do it. Don't give your money to the tobacco companies. Just say no. Drink water. Drink water. There's lots of flavoring in water. There's other ways to be cool parents. Be involved with your children. Talk to your children. Dr. Koni Stone and Dr. Jose Diaz-Garyua, thank you for joining. And real quick, before we do, sign off for potential students who are listening, if they were interested in this discussion and they want to learn from the people here, the guests we have here, you want to give a rundown of the courses you teach. Biochemistry, so there's that. And Gen chem two lab. So second semester, general chemistry lab. I teach a class for preservice teachers called chemistry in the elementary school classroom. But come to my office N 358. I'd be happy to chat with you Monday, Wednesday, Friday at eleven. Yeah. Similarly, send me an email and we can schedule I will be teaching spatial analysis again. GIs Base as an applied geographer, GIS is one of the great stool that we have to uncover patterns of inequity. I have been teaching urban geography, which I think that is a core course, also to talk about how cities are designed. And you have these problems on segregating. Maybe it's not intended, but also those kind of things give us clues to uncover these patterns of inequity. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Stan State Educast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to listen to past episodes, you can visit csustand.edu/podcast. You can also follow and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.