[OldMan&TheWeed]

I know regular tokers that talk about their cannabis usage with their elementary school aged children. They do this because they see is as harmless as drinking wine, and therefore they see no reason to hide it from them. I believe this is ill advised for two obvious reasons:

1) They are putting their lives in the hands of small children. Few adults can be trusted with a secret, and they are trusting little kids with information that could (depending on where they live) put them behind bars, cost them their jobs, and separate the family.

2) It’s not fair for an adult to lay that much on a child. Parents should insulate their kids from adult cares until it is appropriate. Alcohol and drugs are analogous to sex. You should not tell them more than they need to know before they need to know it.

In our own situation the younger ones know nothing about us smoking weed. We rarely smoke anyway - maybe one or two times a month at the most. We don't live a stoner lifestyle and the kids have never been around when we were stoned. Drugs aren’t on the radar screen of our seven year-old and so she has never asked any questions. Our eleven year old has asked questions, and we have given mostly honest answers. When he asks about various substances we tell him what the dangers and effects of each one to the best of our knowledge. But when he asked if I had ever smoked pot, I lied and said no. I’m not a very good liar, my son’s pretty sharp, and maybe he saw through my deception. If he did he had the good grace not to delve any deeper.

My stepson is sixteen, and has been with us for less than a year. Because of his age, and because we knew he had smoked weed before he came to live with us, we have always had honest frank discussions about drugs and alcohol. We don’t prohibit him from indulging, but we don’t endorse or provide it to him either. We would prefer for him to be honest with us about what’s going on than impose a sham prohibition. Instead of just saying no, we talk to him about responsible use. In return he volunteers to us information and stories about what goes on with his friends and at school.

For a while my stepson talked about a kid at school who was always talking and bragging about how much weed he had, how his relatives grew etc. He said this guy would light up at school under the bleachers, in the restroom, whenever and wherever he could. My stepson claimed that he never had smoked at school, but I don’t believe him; although I didn’t push him on this. I just told him to keep his distance from that kid and never to smoke with him at school. I told him that people like this guy believed that everyone was ready to keep his secret, but at least half of the kids would love to turn him in. Sure enough, by the end of the school year he was caught and expelled along with his smoking buddies. My stepson was not among them.