Adolescent Counseling Services’ Resource Blog

Local Teens Help Fight Sale of Tobacco to Minors

California Governor Jerry Brown just signed assembly bill 1301 into law, which would require the state to suspend and revoke a store’s license if they are repeatedly convicted of selling tobacco products to minors. If a store is convicted three times in a five-year-window, its license would be suspended for 45 days. Five convictions in […]

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Blog Series: Nutrition and Mental Health – The Importance of Sharing a Family Meal

Article by Philippe Rey, Psy.D. Executive Director of ACS I would like to begin this series by quoting Marion Cunningham, an advocate of home cooking who just recently died in her 90’s: “Too many families seldom sit down together; it’s gobble and go… eating food on the run, reheating it in relays in the microwave […]

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Use of Pot in Teen Years Linked to IQ Decline by Age 30

As recent studies have shown that marijuana use is extremely popular with adolescents, more so than alcohol and tobacco, further research, just released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that habitually smoking marijuana before age 18 showed an eight-point drop in IQ between the ages of 13 and 38, a considerable […]

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Sacrificing Sleep to Study Causes Academic Issues

A recent study by UCLA finds a direct correlation between lack of sleep, due to over-studying the night before, and poor results in school the following day. “Sacrificing sleep for extra study time is counterproductive,” says Andrew J. Fuligni, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and a senior scientist at the Jane and Terry Semel […]

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California Suburban Teens Transition from Painkillers to Heroin

KQED, the public media station for Northern California recently did a series of stories on the increase of suburban California teenagers who are transitioning  from using painkillers to black tar heroin. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhgdZHPxYds&w=560&h=315] California Watch, a reporting initiative started by the Center for Investigative Reporting, posted this story and video (shown above) on August 15th, […]

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