Written by Sofia Noriega, a Ventura County high school student.

Vaping can bring out the worst in you

It can turn your world around

Thinking that’s the only solution

For you to deal with problems

But it’s just causing addiction

And leading to bigger problems in the future.

Imagine your lungs,

Your heart,

Every organ in your body 

Keeping you alive, 

Only til you...

This post was written by Sofia Noriega, a Ventura County high school student.

Buying my new books makes me feel

so happy as if I was watching a beautiful

sunset. Nothing compares to how you feel

while being so excited to read a new world

in the palm of your hands. Exploring new

worlds almost as if you're traveling without

leaving. The weight of all those feelings

and experiences all in a form...

What can you do to help reduce drug overdoses in your community?

The DEA’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is coming up on Saturday, October 29th, 2022. Rx Drug Take Back Day addresses a crucial public safety and public health issue. According to the 2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers, 4.9 million people misused...

This post was written by a CSUCI student.

Peer pressure in school is a very widespread issue affecting young people, myself included. Going to school every day throughout my life, I was able to see just how widespread it was and still is today. The biggest issue was the use of drugs. 

I have memories back in middle and high school of drugs being discussed. This was somewhat intimidating...

Written by a senior at CSUCI.

My parents divorced when my sister and I were young. (I will refer to my sister as Janet). My mother, several years later, began dating a new man, let’s call him Dave. Dave had two children – I will refer to them as Samantha and Tom. Samantha was my sister’s age, and Tom was my age. We all became fast friends (we were 8 at the time) and enjoyed...

This post was written by a senior at CSUCI.

Throughout my high school (and the beginning of my collegiate) career, I was always concerned about dating. About the fact that I didn’t have a boyfriend, about the fact that boys acted like I didn’t exist unless I was accompanied by a pretty friend, about the fact that I wasn’t even completely sure of my sexuality or myself. 

...

The following article is an excerpt from The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility’s webpage about Discussing Alcohol with Your College Student, found here. We thought this was an important and informative resource to share with our community.

We know many college students make responsible decisions about alcohol consumption. In fact, according to the 2018 Monitoring the...

This post was written by a senior at CSUCI.

I think when I was younger, and I was given drug education in elementary school and middle school, I already anticipated a man dressed in all black with a trench coat on trying to force drugs upon me. Obviously now, as someone in their senior year in college, I know that not only is that not the case, but far from it. In every instance I have been...

Every year, Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE), Ventura County Behavioral Health (VCBH), BRITE, and Ventura County Public Health (VCPH) collaborate to produce a conference for Ventura County youth about tobacco use prevention education called Teens Kick Ash. In March 2020, the focus was on vaping prevention and cannabis education. Workshops included Cannabis – True or False, Media,...

Have you ever counted how many times you’ve seen drinking depicted as cool, exciting, and a rite of passage in movies, social media, and on television? Imagine being a teen and seeing this. The power that advertising and representation has on us is astounding, and our youth are especially vulnerable because their brains are still developing and they might not be thinking logically about...

This post was written by a senior at CSUCI.

I have a lot of friends, and parents of friends, who have differing opinions regarding their teens and alcohol. Some don’t care at all; they are the kind of parents who don’t have many rules at all for their kids, and although they aren’t directly informed about what their kids are doing, they don’t actually make any kind of...

By Julia Lopez

If you really knew me you would know that…

This sentence has stayed with me since I participated in Challenge Day at Oxnard High School. How many people really know me? How many people do I truly let in?

If you really knew me you would know that… I can’t stand avocados or tomatoes.

It may seem like a simple way to start a deeper conversation but food is at the...