A Stateline.org story. The U.S. government continues to increase funding for abstinence-only education and requires states to teach abstinence only in order to receive funds. In November 2005, Maine joined California and Pennsylvania in rejecting thousands of federal dollars in favor of teaching comprehensive sex education.

The Green Yoga Association is a network of yoga practitioners, teachers and businesses who believe that taking care of the planet is essential to yoga practice. It’s based in Emeryville, Calif. It posts a directory of more than 100 “green” yoga studios and teachers all over the country.

Dr. Barry Solof is a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, Calif., and a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He heads the Kaiser Permanente addiction medicine department in West Covina, Calif., and is a board member of the Secular Organization for Sobriety.

Dr. Walter Ling is a professor of psychiatry and director of the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lee Ann Kaskutas is the director of training at the Alcohol Research Group, National Alcohol Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. Her focus is in non-professional treatments such as self-help groups, peer support, social networks, spirituality, and education on the effects of alcohol consumption.

Sarah Zemore is an associate scientist at the Berkeley, Calif.-based Alcohol Research Group who studies social disadvantage and the role of ethnicity, race and socioeconomics in substance use, substance abuse and treatment.

Dr. Linda Hyder Ferry is a professor of medicine at Loma Linda University’s School of Medicine and Public Health in Loma Linda, Calif., who is doing research on spirituality and recovery from addictions, specifically from nicotine addiction. She is the founder of the Foundation for Innovations in Nicotine Dependence (FIND).

Chris Prentiss is co-founder of Passages in Malibu, Calif., an eclectic, holistic substance abuse treatment center that claims to have a cure rate exceeding 80 percent. Prentiss developed his individually based approach by dealing with his son, who was addicted to heroine, cocaine and alcohol for 10 years. Prentiss recently published The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A […]

Victor Davis Hanson is a fifth-generation Californian, a farmer, a classicist and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter Books, 2004), in which he argues that California is being transformed by illegal immigration from Mexico. Contact Hanson through the Hoover Institute’s public affairs office.