Sh!t - My Son Was Caught Smoking Weed
A couple weeks ago my 17-year-old son was driven home by his friend’s mom in the middle of the night.
He came into my room, woke me up and told me he and his two friends had been caught smoking at his friend's house.
I almost shrugged it off as I was still half asleep, but I realized he seemed pretty scared to tell me. He woke me up to tell me, which is something he does not do, so I understood it was more than just smoking.
I asked him what he had been smoking and sure enough, he said marijuana.
I asked him where he got it, who bought it, how many times have they done this. All the typical questions - I guess. I haven’t had to have this conversation with any of his 3 older brothers.
The fact that he was doing something illegal in a place where he could be caught is probably what pissed me off the most. It was not so much that he was doing something illegal that made me mad, but where he was doing it. Does that make me a bad parent or even a bad adult?
He knows the consequences he would have faced had he been caught by almost anyone else. He’s a smart kid, but he thought he and his friends thought they were too smart to be caught. Aaahhh - teenage hubris.
One of these days they will learn that mom's known a lot more than they think.
I was disappointed in him as he was at his friend's house when he was caught. He had been welcome in that home, as one of their own, for close to 10 years. Maybe that was one of the reasons he felt like he could smoke there. He felt so comfortable there he forgot that it was not his own home.
Before I left for work the next morning I let him know I wanted him to apologize to his friend’s mom for being disrespectful of her and her home. I also asked more questions to try to find out why they wanted to try smoking marijuana.
This happened shortly after the election where Michigan had voted to make recreational marijuana legal for adults 21 and older.
I also asked if the recent election had made it okay in their minds to try marijuana.
He sad no.
I asked if it seemed okay to him because of my work with marijuana-related businesses.
Again it was a no.
I was worried this was one of his reasons. That in his mind, he thought ‘my mom does this work, so she will not mind’. If this had been a reason I would have quit working with Connie immediately.
I told him to research why the new law was written as it was, making recreational marijuana legal for 21 and older and not 18 as smoking tobacco is. He went on to list several reasons, so I let him slide on the research - he knew the reasons why.
He then asked if he could still go snowboarding that day. I laughed at him. “Not a chance,” I said.
As for punishment, one of his friends had certain privileges taken away and the other friend did not get in trouble at all. That left me wondering what I should do to make sure he understood that this is not acceptable behavior for his age.
I did one of the things I do best and researched why kids try marijuana and what to do about it.
What I found was that most of the articles published were a bunch of crap. We need to do a better job of educating our kids and most adults.
Many of the articles were full of inaccuracies, poorly worded, and included deceptive reporting of research findings.
As a society, we have been told for so long that smoking marijuana is one of the worst things anyone could do. I was raised in this era - where Nancy Reagan did a fantastic job convincing us of the dangers of marijuana. It took a lot of research for me to change my mind.
I did find two resources that were not either telling you that your kid was on his way to using heroin and cocaine, that you needed to monitor every move they made, or that you needed to enroll your child in a certain drug prevention program. One is from Canada where marijuana was just legalized, and the other is from a US government organization. Read both of them and compare the information in each. Continue with more research if you still have questions.
http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/workbook/cannabis-use-and-youth-a-parents-guide
US Department of Health & Human Services