The Pros And Cons Of Smoking Pot With Your Parents

The Weed Blog’s Mothers’ Day post on “marijuana moms” raises the thorny issue doing drugs with your parents’ knowledge — or even their participation.

Writes Johnny Green, “pot activists ARE MOMS that believe in legalization!” He introduces the organization Moms for Marijuana, whose tenets include the following: “That our governments and corporations should research and utilize all the potential benefits of this plant; and make locally grown Cannabis products available to the public so that we may have the choice in using a natural and less harmful alternative to the products we currently purchase.” But also: “That, as with all drugs, Marijuana should NOT BE USED by developing minds under the age of legal consent without parental guidance, as well the recommendation and continuous evaluation by a licensed medical physician.” So basically, kids should smoke weed with their moms. And maybe also their doctors.

It’s not a new recommendation — many of us knew That One Kid in high school whose parents ascribed to the “I’d rather have them do it at home” philosophy, allowing pot-smoking in the house. That One Kid’s parents’ permissiveness varied, from individual pot use to parties that might also include alcohol to actually partaking of cannabis with the kids. The first two had their rationales — when the strategy worked, it could also allow a degree of supervision over activities kids would otherwise do in secret. But smoking up with your mom? This was definitely considered creepy at my high school, if for no other reason than that dumbass philosophical inquiries like “what does time really mean?” are better shared with buddies than parents. Then again, I was never That One Kid — perhaps former TOKs will disagree.

I will say that the idea of smoking weed with parental guidance does ignore one key attraction of adolescent drug use: transgression. Even when provided with a site for sanctioned smoking, kids in my experience tended to seek out other avenues of experimentation, perhaps simply because they wanted to do something that would piss their parents off. Most teens feel the need to form an identity separate from Mom and Dad at some point, and while not everyone uses drugs to achieve this, they’re certainly a popular method. So while talking to kids openly about marijuana and other drugs is always a good idea, parents shouldn’t necessarily assume that such openness will inoculate kids against all forms of rebellion.