FAMILY VALUES GOING UP IN SMOKE

Outdoor concerts this week have attracted thousands of people to
Sarnia, but the story that's grabbed headlines elsewhere concerns a
mother and daughter allegedly caught smoking marijuana outside the
gates of Bayfest.

Provincial police say the mother, in her 40s, and the daughter, in
her 20s, lit up while sitting in a parked car on Harbour Road before
the start of Wednesday' Nickelback concert.

Fourteen marijuana cigarettes were seized after an officer noticed
smoke billowing from the vehicle.

Call us old-fashioned, but we find it deeply unsettling when parents
take recreational drugs with their kids. And far from being the
exception, family drug cases are coming to court with increasingly regularity.

Just last month, a 46-year-old mother and her 22-year-old son walked
out of a Sarnia courtroom with matching $1,200 fines for marijuana possession.

Police entering their Petrolia residence smelled a burnt odour and
found 700 grams of pot scattered throughout the home, along with
smaller quantities of a narcotic and cannabis resin.

Just a week earlier, a Sarnia woman was convicted of marijuana
trafficking and given nine months of house arrest after admitting she
regularly gave marijuana to her eight-year-old daughter to control
her hyperactivity.

And so it goes. Other recent cases involved a 65-year-old father,
daughter and son-in-law who converted two high-end Sarnia homes into
a million-dollar marijuana grow-op, and a St. Clair Township couple
arrested with their 18-year-old son on various drug offences.

It's said that the family that plays together stays together. Sadly,
some are also going to jail together.