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Action Family Counseling Discusses Drug Addiction At COC

Action Family Counseling and College of the Canyons officials hosted “Drugs Kill” in front of a packed house Thursday, as hundreds listened to a message about the dangers of drug addiction.


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Action Family Counseling is offering weekly on-campus meetings at COC next week for those seeking help with substance abuse, and the talk was aimed at education, said Bob Sharits, a program director at Action.

“This was actually a much different message in the sense that we want people to really look at the so-called ‘less dangerous’ drugs, such as alcohol, pot and tobacco,” he said, adding that’s where most drug abuse begins. “If they don’t start with those then maybe they won’t get to the harder ones.”

Related: Action Hosts ‘Drugs Kill’ Info Meeting At College Of The Canyons

A half-hour Resource Fair before the talks were also part of the effort to raise awareness, co-sponsored by AM-1220 KHTS and College of the Canyons.

Drug addiction experts discuss gateway drugs

The most significant trend Action Family founder Cary Quashen and his counseling staff see right now might be a spike in heroin and crystal methamphetamine abuse and addiction.

However, raising awareness about the path that leads to addiction — which often starts with drugs many consider innocuous — will hopefully prevent or stop people from traveling down a road that can lead to addiction, poverty, crime and death, officials said.

“We’ve done such a great job in this community of beating up crystal methamphetamine and pills and hard drugs,” Quashen said. “But no one wakes up and starts using hard drugs.”

There’s usually a gradual path, and it often starts with what many consider the “safer” option, which is marijuana, Sharits said, which was one of the things that was pointed out during the talk Thursday.

To a person, all of the former addicts who spoke said marijuana was their first drug of choice, Sharits said.

“There’s certainly a lot of debate about whether or not (marijuana) is harmful, especially with the legalization laws,” Sharits said. “But there’s no doubt it’s a gateway drug and there’s no doubt that it leads to other things.”


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The first meeting, which will take place at noon Wednesday in the Health and Wellness Center on COC’s Valencia campus.
Action is joining in the college’s on-campus efforts to help those who might be struggling with drug and alcohol addiction at a particularly vulnerable time in someone’s life, Quashen said.

“You get so many kids who are really sheltered by safe structures in their life, and supported and loved, and now all of a sudden they’re in college and they’re ‘free,’” Quashen said, adding that’s when some get their first exposure to binge drinking and other unsafe drug use. “We want to make sure we have a safe place for people to come.”

Action Family Counseling Discusses Drug Addiction At COC

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About Perry Smith

Perry Smith is a print and broadcast journalist who has won several awards for his focused, hyperlocal community coverage in several different regions of the country. In addition to five years of experience covering the Santa Clarita Valley, Smith, a San Fernando Valley native, has worked in newspapers and news websites in Los Angeles, the Northwest, the Central Valley and the South, before coming to KHTS in 2012. To contact Smith, email him at Perry@hometownstation.com.