Tuesday Talks with Tori: CSPA President Chris Cathcart on the Issues

Everyone knows there are many aspects to dealing with the issue of inhalant abuse. Today, I sat down with Chris Cathcart, President of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, ACE Board Secretary and father of four to get his perspective on how industry and ACE can work effectively to protect our children and communities. For more information on CSPA visit their homepage at http://www.cspa.org/

Cathcart on...
CSPA’s involvement with ACE
Chris Cathcart has been involved with the Alliance for Consumer Education since the foundation’s launch in 2000. This involvement and the strong partnership between CSPA and ACE proves his belief that it is vital for the industry to team up with non-industry in order to educate the public about health and safety risks associated with common products. “We are concerned parents and educators as well, and we saw a growing concern that children could misuse products in ways that we couldn’t even imagine.” This concern led to the development of ACE, which Cathcart believes has a unique role because “its goal is to reach out to any and every consumer.”

Being a parent
As a father of four, Cathcart realizes that, while they may think you’re hovering, “you sort of have to keep a close eye on your kids, because there is a lightning fast spread of information through the internet which allows your kids to find out anything.” He believes that parents, educators and guardians are going to have to change and adapt because the internet is not going away, and the ways of communicating are changing constantly. ACE is helping with this adaptation by developing a world in Second Life and creating social networking pages on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Squidoo. Cathcart also emphasizes the importance of talking to children. He references a statistic from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America that shows when a parent talks to their child about inhalant abuse, that child is half as likely to even try an inhalant.

ACE’s accomplishments
Chris Cathcart has been the secretary of ACE’s board for the foundations entire existence, and has watched ACE grow and evolve for the past eight years. “ACE has grown in so many remarkable ways. The staff’s ingenuity to get into the school systems and really get out there amazes me. Every week, their reach grows exponentially.”