Dan posted an interesting comment on Monday about drug education.
Dan, when my sons were in the teens, we told them that we viewed pot and alcohol use about the same. Each can be used relatively safely and each can easily lead to abuse and messed up lives. If we saw their use of either causing a problem for them, we’d intervene quickly and if things didn’t change right away, we’d slap their ass into treatment so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. Since pot is illegal, we didn’t allow it in our house or cars or anywhere on our property. And since alcohol use is illegal for those under 21, we never allowed their recreational alcohol use in our house. We did serve wine to all our kids during the ritual of holiday meals, however.
Neither my wife or I smoke dope and haven’t for 30 years. We do drink some alcohol each week but we’ve not been drunk in 30 years. So we felt we were modeling appropriate use but couldn’t in good conscience say to them “Don’t drink or smoke pot” when they’d see us have a couple glasses of wine on Saturday nights.
Has it worked out? They’ve all abused alcohol on occasion, and it’s caused an occasional problem in their lives. They’ve all probably spent too much money on pot when it was probably financially stupid to do so. Both chemicals have probably inhibited their emotional and spiritual maturation to some degree. So it’s too early to tell, I guess. I’m not ready to pronounce our way as the best way. I still stand by it, though.