Thatâs not what I got from it; in fact, it seemed resigned to the fact that parents were going to lose the argument.
The end message seemed to be: âYou may not be able to prevent them from smoking pot, but you can at least give them the information they need to make an informed choice.â
My argument with the kid is he is mostly in trouble for not sharing with mom and dad. 
I hate that phrase as wellâŚand you are right.
The fact of the matter is, us middle-aged middle-class people have figured it outâŚbecause we went through the same bullshit we know our kids are going through and hope that we can steer them away from what we had to deal with â especially knowing that we might have only gotten through it purely by luck. We want them to have every advantageâŚand to screw up as they are ought to do, but on better terms than we did.
However, this pains me to understand what my parents were saying. I mean, I know I was more right than they were and they were just talking out their ass, but I get that they were trying to help. However, I actually canâŚunlike my parents and their parents.
Iâm smoking weed right now.
Some teenagers will point out that research linking marijuana to
neurological impairment often hinges on correlations. Teenagers may use
pot because they have cognitive challenges, not the other way around.
If my kid is already this smart as a teenager, theyâve earned a night off with some buds.
I always liked South Parkâs Randy explanation to his kid.
âPot makes it ok to be bored. If you are bored you get up and do something. Read a book, take a walk, go learn somethingâ
This is what I told my daughter when she was of an age that needed that conversation. It worked. Now she just sits in her room and veges out on Playstation hockey.
Personally, smoking some pot was always step one in me doing things I wouldnât have necessarily gotten off my butt to do otherwise (YMMV on my definition of âdoing somethingâ) including riding bikes, running around in the woods (with rich backstory), bouldering, drawing, brainstorming ideas. Iâd get extra-itchy about sitting around doing nothing if I was high. Partly because I felt like I was wasting the weed if I didnât. Maybe an additional lesson is teaching kids how different people react to drugs differently, and how to listen to their minds and bodies when they experiment.
Of course my reaction was also contingent on how I was feeling before I smoked, which I think is an important lesson for kids, too. My mood, positive or negative, would always be magnified by smoking. I always tried to wait until I had true free time to avoid guilt and worry coming in the edges of my high, and made sure I was generally rested, hydrated and fed, and not super bummed out by anything.
Isnât it neat how âSavvy consumers are expected to look to the available evidence, not legislation, when making decisions about their own health and well being.â now that the legal guidance isnât conveniently monolithic?
You donât normally associate the NYT with advocacy of ignoring dumb laws.
The worst thing you can do is listen to the feds &/or lie to your kids. Weed is a Schedule I narcotic, along with Heroin- while Oxy is a Schedule II. So, according to the feds, weed is more harmful, more addictive and has less medical function than oxycodone / morphine. In reality, weed is less harmful than beer*.
Its lies like that that took me from smoking pot as a lad to trying everything I could get my hands on â because if my parents, and all adults really, were lying so fervently about âthe potâ they were probably lying about everything.
Took some bumps and bruises I probably didnât need to take and jaded me with adults until I was one.
Iâm still jaded with authority thoâŚ
*Stoners donât beat their wives when they get high, they donât beat anybody & they canât even OD - absolute worst case scenario is theyâre off to Lennyâs for a grand slam breakfastâŚ
I wonder if marijuana legalization will some day result in the stock photo accompanying stories about marijuana showing someone consuming a halfway sensible amount of marijuana.
I have to laugh at these pictures where a skinny kid is smoking or about to smoke enough dope to sedate a rhinocerosâŚ
I guess the author doesnât remember the teen mindset of feeling healthy, being bulletproof and that nothing bad would ever happen. That argument about not hurting your brain will just bounce off teenage invincibility shields.
I think there are definitely better ways of talking to kids about this, and I may be saying the obvious here, but marijuana CAN compromise your quality of life. I was addicted to it for years. Yes, I know itâs only a psychological addiction, but it I was trapped none the less. It didnât just take the edge off. It numbed me and was a way of escaping my problems and myself. Weâve all known potheads who lose their motivation and just sit around all day, as well. I was fortunate enough to have always been employed and meeting my responsibilities, and I envy those who can smoke it casually. My point is that some people are fine smoking weed once in awhile, but letâs not forget it affects everybody differently. It can be a time, money, and brain drain for some of us. I think kids at least have a right to know that. Mine sure well.
Quite possibly the easiest way to convince your teenage child that smoking weed isnât cool.
Never thought of thatâŚ
Ah, just about all my friends whoâs parents smoked pot also smoke it themselves, myself included. Although I did wait until I was 23 to start, and I still havenât done (and wonât ever do) nearly as many other drugs as my parents.
Oh, I didnât say it was an effective way of keeping your kids from smoking weed. They just wonât feel nearly as cool when they do so.
My main question to you is, if you used it to escape your problems, do you think that you would not have used anything else for this purpose? What if that substance you chose instead was also physically addicting, could you have been hooked worse? What I mean is, if you used alcohol or harder drugs to escape, once you faced your problems, and came to a better place, you were able to stop smoking, or at least stop using it, for that reason.
I am not judging, as I smoked as a teenager, but for different reasons. I was an extremely driven kid, who hung around with other extremely driven kids. We used pot to wind down, and relax, but I often wondered if pot wasnât available, would I have begun drinking instead. I quit smoking before i turned 20, just because it was frowned on by the adult community. It is funny how now as my age group is beginning to retire, many people are going back to it for things like insomnia, and other age related aches and pains.
Wow. I clicked through to a few of the scientific studies they cite, and they donât look⌠all that scientific.
Studies of adolescent heavy users have identified impairments in learning and working memory up to six weeks after cessation, suggesting persisting effects, yet raise the possibility that abnormalities may remit with a longer duration of abstinence.
âUp to six weeksâ means âno permanent effects,â right? Did I misread that? And the bit about âsuggestingâ and âraising the possibilityâ - how do you model that statistically? Oh, I remember. You donât. Those are categories of rhetoric, not science.
I think your experience is probably fairly common, and it is worth helping kids understand that.
If cannabis use is a destructive force in your life, thatâs a bad thing.
But I also think a lot of these issues are really context sensitive and culturally sensitive.
If cannabis use makes you less motivated and content to just hang out all day, that isnât an inherently bad thing. It might be counter to the continuous normative social pressure on young adults to strive and achieve and be motivated efficient workers, but maybe some time to stop and question that can be beneficial. Maybe there are other cultures, other times in the history of humanity, when life hasnât been a desperate race for success and status.
My social group as a teenager and young adult certainly would have appeared externally to be just sitting around smoking dope all day without motivation, but we were reading interesting books, making art and music, and fucking. What were we missing out on again? A safe and secure future? Hands up if you got one of thoseâŚ
