PASS THE WEED, DAD

Parents Are Smoking Dope With Their Kids. What Are They
Thinking?

"It was a little weird, seeing my parents stoned," Tom confesses. The
Toronto high school student was describing the first time he'd smoked
marijuana -- at home last spring, just after turning 17, when he
shared a joint with his hard-working, middle-class parents. "But I had
an amazing, fantastic connection with my dad, and it was a good
experience for all of us. They showed me how to take the seeds and
stems out of the pot. Then, basically, we ate.

My mom ordered sushi, and we made a mountain of nachos. It kind of
felt like a rite of passage."

After his family initiation, Tom bought six or seven joints of his own
for a camping trip, "and that was cool too." But his new girlfriend
didn't approve of pot, or him on it. "She said there was this
separation thing that happened whenever I smoked." So Tom gave it up,
even though his older sister had just given him a nice handmade pipe
for his birthday. "But my other sister could care less about pot. Lots
of kids try it and don't like it. I think it's totally
individual."

Nicole, who maintained a scholarship throughout university and has now
graduated, grew up in a household where pot smoking was as casually
present as wine with dinner. "Marijuana was so integrated into our
social life that it didn't seem to make sense to hide it," says her
father, a lawyer. "So we didn't. She began smoking pot when she was
around 16. This was in the nineties, when the police were pretty
aggressive about it, so we thought that it was safer for her to smoke
at home than in the streets. And then when she was in college, there
were definitely times when she and I would smoke a joint together. Or
I might buy some dope and give her some."

"But lately, we've made some new rules. No smoking dope together. No
tobacco in the house. We are rethinking things in general."

He pauses. "Yes, we were open about smoking pot around her. But was it
a good idea? I don't know."

Nicole, now 24, says she's "always believed it was a good thing that
it wasn't hidden or taboo. I've seen a lot of sheltered kids who got
into it at 12 or 13, as rebellion. I wasn't interested till later. I
tried it and thought, 'Hey, this is good!' It was relaxing, and fun,
and it numbs you out, which can be a good thing."

Most parents, of course, aren't sitting around the family bong with
their kids. They go along with the authorities who view marijuana as a
drug with addictive potential that turns kids into over-snacking,
under-motivated, learning-impaired couch potatoes. But the 1.5 million
Canadian adults who, according to the Canadian Medical Association,
smoke marijuana recreationally might not agree. In fact, a recent
Canadian Addiction Survey found that 630,000 of us aged 15 and older
smoke cannabis every day. And among middle-aged Canadians, dope use in
the past year has increased from 1.4 per cent in 1994 to 8.4 per cent
in 2004.

Perhaps as a consequence of this ongoing boomer buzz, some parents
feel a zero-tolerance policy with teenagers simply doesn't work and
may only increase the allure of pot. They would rather keep the lines
of communication open, talk to their children about the genuine risks
of individual drugs, and help them develop their own good judgment
about drug use -- whether it's tobacco, alcohol or marijuana.

Sharing a joint with your 16- or 17-year-old may be pushing it.
Nevertheless, parents who talk about "drugs" as if they're all the
same, equating pot with more lethal substances like cocaine or crystal
meth -- a popular form of amphetamine that is wildly addictive and
blatantly destructive -- run the risk of not being listened to at all.
When we demonize drugs, ironically we tend to empower the drugs,
rather than our kids.

Families have changed since the days of Father Knows Best (the
equivalent show today would be "Father Tokes Best"). Many parents are
veterans of the counterculture who did a lot more than inhale in the
sixties. For some, marijuana was just an ambient phase, like
black-light posters. Others have grown up into successful, civilized,
recreational pot smokers who don't want to lie to their kids. They
consider the moderate use of pot to be a relatively benign activity --
and certainly better than drinking eight beers and getting behind the
wheel of a car. Binge drinking, which has become epidemic among
college students, can also be fatal, but no one has ever died from a
marijuana overdose (although it carries its own health risks, affects
driving ability, and has certainly caused repeated screenings of bad
movies).

One thing is clear, though: regardless of whether their parents are
strict or permissive, most kids will try cannabis sooner or later. By
the time they exit their teen years, the Canadian Addiction Survey
reports, 70 per cent of them will have smoked a joint at some point --
if not in the past hour. Among everyone who's tried it, 18 per cent
smoke daily.

Tom and Nicole waited longer than most teenagers to experiment with
marijuana. The average age of first use has gone down, from 14.5 years
in 1995 to 13.7 in 2003. In fact, Toronto's Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health (CAMH) reports that five per cent of school kids have
tried pot before the end of Grade 6. (Can the preschool doobie be far
behind? Hemp soothers?) Twenty-eight per cent of students who've
finished Grade 9 will have smoked pot in the past year. Roughly the
same percentage, it's worth noting, have never tried any drugs,
including alcohol or tobacco, and -- before we get too hysterical --
47 per cent of Canadian high school students "strongly disapprove of
regular marijuana smoking."

Nevertheless, cannabis remains the No. 1 illicit drug in North
America. And its reputation may be shifting, as science uncovers new
medical potential for the cannabinoids that are the active ingredients
in marijuana. Last month, a Saskatchewan study reported that a
cannabis-like substance injected into rats caused new nerve-cell
growth in the hippocampus, suggesting the possibility that marijuana
might actually improve certain brain functions -- contrary to its
reputation as a memory-shredder. (It should be added that the rats
were getting a drug 100 times more powerful than THC, the compound
that gives marijuana its high.) A study published in a recent issue of
the journal Nature also suggested that marijuana may "more closely
resemble an antidepressant than a drug of abuse." And, of course, the
much-debated medical benefits of cannabis for people suffering with
chronic pain, AIDS or multiple sclerosis are already well known.

Marijuana is also firmly embedded in popular culture, from the slim
green leaves featured on the cover of Willie Nelson's recent CD
(reggae, of course), to the phenomenon of "bud porn" (coffee-table
books featuring photos of dewy, resin-oozing exotic strains of
cannabis), to Weeds, the new series currently airing on Showcase. It
stars Mary-Louise Parker as a freshly widowed mother who supports her
family by dealing pot in her upscale Californian suburb. ("But not to
kids," she explains, setting the moral high bar of the show.)

The series traffics in lame stereotypes (her suppliers are a
trash-talkin' black family whose mother cleans and bags her product at
the kitchen table). But it flies in the face of George W. Bush's
$35-billion War on Drugs, which focuses many of its public awareness
programs on the evils of smoking pot while largely ignoring the
scourge of crystal meth use in North America. And it's one more sign
that marijuana is not about to be weeded out of the culture any time
soon.

If this is the case, what sort of limits should parents offer, when
their 13-year-old comes home from a party to announce -- because they
encourage the kid to be open -- that he has just smoked his first
joint? Of course, they turn off David Letterman, pour a glass of wine,
sit down and say, "We don't want you smoking marijuana, sweetheart.
You're too young." Then he says, with a red-eyed glare, "Why not? You
do."

How does a parent respond to that? With a lecture on how dope impairs
concentration and learning, and may not be the best thing for the
lungs? Or with a mini-joint and some Neil Young on the CD player?

The Pot (Smoker) Calling the Kettle Black.

"When it comes to my own son, I'm totally protective -- I veer right into
Reefer Madness territory," says Ray, a Toronto father and regular grass
smoker who was introduced to hash at the age of 15 by his own, scientist
father. (Note: not even the most nonchalant pot smoker would agree to be
named here. Apparently no one, 15 or 55, wants to be known as a pothead --
or arrested. So the names and some identifying details in these stories have
been changed.)

"When my son asked if I smoked dope, I simply lied and said no," Ray
continues. "But his older sister was with us. She knew that I smoked,
and said, 'What are you talking about, dad? Of course you do!" But
Ray's double standard is just fine with his son; kids don't
necessarily want their parents to be cool. The writer and film
director Nora Ephron once observed that if children are given the
choice between a happy, gratified parent off boogie-boarding in
Hawaii, or a suicidal parent in the next room, they'll pick the
miserable, available one every time. The baby boomer pursuit of
pleasure and openness may have produced parents who resemble
party-hearty older siblings rather than helpful, boring authority
figures. "Even though in the real world, marijuana may occupy an
unclear, grey zone," says Bob Glossop, a spokesman for the Vanier
Institute for the Family, "one of the roles of the parent is to
simplify their kids' world, and offer limits."

Some parents are open about their dope smoking while drawing firm
lines about drug use for their kids. Patrick is a Toronto writer,
poet, parent and cannabis fan. He finds a joint in the late afternoon
helps him write. "When my son confronted me and said, 'But you do it,'
I said, 'Yes, I smoke pot, but I also earn a living. You are 12 and in
Grade 8 and you shouldn't smoke marijuana." Patrick mostly confines
his habit to his workspace, but he has always smoked in the house. "My
line with my two sons was clear. I told them, 'If you want to finish
your education, don't smoke weed.' It tends to de-motivate kids
regarding school. I know it brought out my own rebellion, and made me
want to quit school and fight the system."

Patrick's relationship to marijuana goes back 27 years, when his
stepson, then six, entered his life. "The vibe around pot smoking was
different then; it was a more legitimate activity. I smoked in the
house, but I explained to my stepson that it was an herb -- coltsfoot
- -- that I had to smoke, for my lungs." He sounds a bit sheepish here.
"So, yeah, it was a lie, but not entirely; it was an herbal
supplement."

His stepson grew up to become a very conservative adult, and a
non-smoker, but "surprisingly tolerant" of marijuana. "Coltsfoot has
become a kind of joke between us," says Patrick.

When he had his own sons, they both ignored his advice and took up
dope smoking around 13. His eldest, Richard, then started dealing; he
encountered some violence, got robbed, and finally decided that the
dope life was not a good one. "Although I do think he honed his
business skills when he was selling," Patrick muses. "He was making
good money." Gradually, Richard gave up dope. "He saw that all his
friends were dropping out of school, and he didn't want to. He's now
in university, studying philosophy, doing well, and he rarely smokes
pot. He'd rather argue about philosophy now, which drives me crazy,
because . . ." -- and here the truly committed pot smoker can be
detected -- "it's so damn rational."

But Patrick remembers his sons' drug years as a "worrying time. I was
really concerned." And he's not alone. Parents worry about the dangers
associated with the criminal aspect of marijuana -- which is, after
all, still an illegal substance, carrying a maximum fine of $1,000
and/or six months in jail for simple possession. The government may be
pondering the wisdom of spending millions on imprisoning cannabis
offenders when gunshot deaths seem to be everywhere, and white collar
crime flies under the radar. With 69 per cent of Canadians favouring
decriminalization of pot possession, according to a February 2003
poll, the feds have taken a step to acknowledging the country's dope
use. Last year, they introduced a bill that would decriminalize
possession of small amounts of cannabis. But it's currently sitting
with a Commons committee and is unlikely to become law before the next
federal election.

As they step out onto their back decks to have a quick after-dinner
toke, noticing that thick feeling in their lungs again, parents also
worry about the long-term effects of marijuana on a 13-year-old's
developing mind and body. (Many experts believe regular pot smoking
damages the lungs, though there's debate over whether it's more or
less harmful than tobacco.) And then there's the school issue: chronic
use is linked to declining school work and dropping out.

One Toke Too Many Over the Line.

Young people who have already smoked marijuana for a decade are
discovering what some of their parents know -- it is more
habit-forming than its reputation suggests. Eric, who works as a
fly-fishing guide near Vancouver, is 19 and has been smoking pot daily
- -- except for the brief periods when he's tried to stop -- for about
seven years. He lives in a province where more than half the
population has tried pot and many are regular users.

Eric's parents were both involved in the political upheaval of the
sixties. His mother once spent a night in jail for possession of pot,
and, Eric says, "my father told me that he tried everything once,
which I tend to believe." Eric's dad, Dmitri, is now a criminal
psychologist who is in favour of the legalization of marijuana --
although he no longer smokes it himself, and dearly wishes his son
would stop too. Despite his liberal perspective, Dmitri views the
heavy pot smoking among his son's circle as "insidiously costly." Eric
- - whom his father proudly describes as a "beautiful, athletic,
creative, sensitive young man" - couldn't agree more.

"I would like to quit, a lot," Eric says. "And every single friend I
know who smokes heavily wants to stop too. Dope is okay in moderation,
but when your life starts to revolve around it every day, it becomes
like any other addiction. You lose your motivation. Your senses get
numbed. And you don't get out of life what you could if you weren't
stoned all the time. It was fun to party at 14. But the older you get,
the more you kind of want to pull up your socks and get your life
going. I've quit a few times, but it's hard. I don't even have to go
out and buy it - it's all around me."

Bestselling American health and wellness author Dr. Andrew Weil could
not be called anti-pot by any stretch. And the 2004 edition of his
book, From Chocolate to Morphine, is an unhysterical guide to a wide
spectrum of mind-altering drugs. But Weil is very clear about the
risks of habitual use. "Marijuana dependence can be sneaky in its
development," he writes. "It doesn't appear overnight like cigarette
addiction . . . but rather builds up over a long time. The main danger
of smoking marijuana is simply that it will get away from you,
becoming more and more of a repetitive habit and less and less of a
useful way of changing consciousness."

Elizabeth Ridgely is a Toronto therapist and executive director of the
George Hull Centre for Children and Families, which has a
substance-abuse program open to heavy pot smokers. "The most important
thing for parents to know is that marijuana is stronger than it used
to be in the Woodstock days," she says. "People who use it habitually
use it to soothe themselves, and when they stop, they can feel
agitated and anxious. It can really mess up a kid. But kids are
surprised to hear this -- families aren't having those kinds of
conversations about drugs."

Dreams Gone Up in Smoke.

"We call them Jell-O-heads," says Tanya, a 52-year-old photo-archivist
who lives in Toronto. "Boys who can't really think." She is referring
to her 19-year-old son and his friends, who regularly smoke dope on
the third floor of her house. "When they come in the door and go up
the stairs, it's like having large cedar trees in the house.
Everything shakes and rattles. Then they go up to my son's room, and
the music starts, and the laughing."

Tanya is a former pot smoker who now considers dope a "real
time-waster. I wasted so many years as a hippie, smoking. But it was
part of the language back then. It was social, it was anti-authority,
it was very sensual. I don't see that with my son's crowd. They just
seem sedated. They use a bong, and the drug is really clean and
refined and incredibly potent -- it's not the ditch weed we used to
smoke. It doesn't give you the big fuzzy body stone we used to get
from dope. They just get high. I think it dumbs my kid down. The thing
that bothers me is that he doesn't seem present when he's stoned.

"My son gave me some of his dope once," says Tanya. "I thought it
would be a good way to, you know, talk about it. I didn't want to
smoke, so I ate it, and suddenly my eyelids had no function -- I mean,
I would close my eyes and it would just go on forever. When will this
be over, I thought."

After some ineffective drug counselling, her son eventually cut down
on his own. "Now he says he only smokes it to get to sleep, as a
sedative." She laughs. "Remember when we thought smoking marijuana
made us more aware?"

A friend of Tanya's, a Gestalt therapist, has a theory about the
downside of heavy pot smoking for teenagers. She considers it a
"dream-stealer. At the age when they should be generating their own
fantasies and dreams, a drug can usurp that. The visions belong to the
drug, not to them."

Smokescreen for Other Problems.

Mario, a handsome, athletic 23-year-old, went the whole nine yards
with drugs and teen rebellion. He started smoking dope, taking acid
and staying out till 4 a.m. when he was 12 and 13. He and his friends
would get stoned and go chase skunks through the park in the middle of
the night, until somebody called the cops. "If there was a rule, he
would break it," remembers his father. He had separated from the boy's
mother and was living with his new partner. The separation was civil,
and Mario and his younger brother, Paul, were welcome in both households.

"My mother didn't hide the fact that she would smoke around the house
occasionally," Mario says. "But she didn't glamorize it. If you're
going to have a parent who smokes pot, she went about it the right
way. Kids are supersensitive to anything that's hypocritical,
especially in their parents. It breaks trust." But his parents worried
about the effect Mario's behaviour was having on Paul. They asked him
to honour one final rule -- no smoking pot in the house, or around his
younger brother. When Mario broke that one, his father asked him to
move out.

So at the age of 15, for almost two years, Mario was out on the
street, couch-surfing at friends' houses and living for a time in a
hostel for street kids. He quit school after three weeks of Grade 9.
"We gave him money to buy toiletries, which he probably spent on
dope," his father says. They stayed in touch, though, and finally his
mother said, "That's enough," and let him move in with her. He went
back to high school and graduated. He reconnected with the rest of his
family, was accepted at Queen's and got a degree in anthropology, and
by his late teens had lost interest in pot.

Mario now looks back on those years with hard-earned intelligence and
insight. "As far as our family problems go, I think dope was more of a
flashpoint than the real issue. My pot smoking was an abrasive thing,
and my parents concentrated on that. And it did have tangible fallout
- -- in terms of punctuality and procrastination and school. You know,
if a kid isn't getting his work done, and he's smoking dope, it's an
easy equation to make. But there's usually more than dope going on."

Poor parents -- they always seem to miss the point. And what has
become the ultimate parental sin now that pot is out of the closet?
Smoking cigarettes. Mario also has a sister, Lucy. At the age of 11,
she came home one night to find a dinner party in progress, and her
non-smoking mother sitting back with a lit cigarette in hand. "She
went ballistic," recalls the mother, "and after everyone left, Lucy
came down and sprayed the room with perfume. It was a big deal -- kids
hate it when their parents do anything self-destructive."

So, a memo to all you law-breaking, pot smoking parents: if you want
your kids not to worry, just say no -- to tobacco.