Posted on 08/02/2016 8:46:52 AM PDT by Mariner
Portland, Ore.
For Oregon kids growing up in the age of legal marijuana, the presence of pot can be a matter of perspective.
Pausing during a visit to a mall in Portland, Neema Doti and her friends described the plant as ubiquitous.
They recounted classmates who got it from older friends or even, in one case, a permissive parent. It was, one noted, all over Snapchat. But that didn’t seem to influence Doti and her friends, who uniformly said they had no interest.
“You might not be in control of whatever you’re doing,” said Doti, 18. “It messes up your health as well ... it’ll affect your education.”
But less abstinent teenagers said they saw little difference. Sam S., an 18-year-old who grew up in Portland, described himself as a “relatively avid user,” reflecting an adolescent propensity for experimenting regardless of the law, which took effect in October. He declined to be named since he’s still not allowed to use marijuana legally. Not that it’s ever stopped him.
“From before it was legalized to after didn’t really change anything,” Sam said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
“All through HS I never did pot of alcohol. I suffered from a case of “fear of dad.” I’m now almost 52 and have still never tried pot. I didn’t drink alcohol until I was 20.”
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Similar situation for me. I didn’t have a ‘fear of Dad’ so much as I really, really did not want to disappoint him. I was one of the very few who didn’t use drugs.
As a result, I had to woo my women the old fashioned way - with good looks and charm. And playing football - football always seems to help.
Same as you do with alcohol or cigarettes.
Some will listen, some will not.
“If I catch you smoking, smelling like it or possessing that crap, then you can find your own apartment and pay for it, along with food, clothes gas and insurance. Oh, and I will take back my car.”
Incentives work.
Hey kids! Chronic use of the weed (aka ‘chronic’) has been tied to schizophrenia. The more you know...
Are they not trying it now when it’s illegal?
I don’t think you can.
The method *I* would use, having no children, would be to look around and try to find people in their 50’s and 60’s who used pot heavily. And with your kid in tow, ask them.
And find people in the 35-45 range who used heavily. See if they can hold jobs.
Kids who are 16-18-20 have no discernment and are capable of objectively evaluating nothing, including whatever your advice you may give them. Indeed, their instinct will likely be to rebel against whatever advice you give them. Mine was.
If you want them not to use pot as teenagers, IMO your word that it is destructive to young brains will not be heard nor will they pay attention. The work (on your part) involved is finding the bad examples of people who used. Perhaps homeless shelters.
I was strange in that my parents were products of the 60s and 70s, and everything that went with that.
I was a child of the 80s and never had to be told not to try that stuff. Like a Alex P. Keyton clone.
I didn’t have my first drink until I was 24.
I was looking forward to being able to legally drink, when I turned 21.
I was transferred to Okinawa a couple of months before my 21st birthday, where the drinking age was whether you could see over the bar. Took all the mystery out of it.
I can count the number of times I've been drunk and artificially stupid, over 65 years, on the fingers of one hand.
‘If it feels good, do it’ will overcome any negatives for at least 3/4 of the population when it comes to pot. The only answer is Singapore’s way imo. Kill the suppliers and the users until people get the idea.
“Chronic use of the weed (aka ‘chronic’) has been tied to schizophrenia.”
A correlation, but a correlation does not equal causation. Schizophrenics tend to self-medicate, so that seems to be a more likely explanation for the correlation.
In Texas HS football is a lifestyle. I quit playing after 10th grade and got a job. I preferred to have money to go do things. My parents were old fashioned and said if I wanted “luxury” things I had to earn them.
Can we do that for alcohol, too?
Our kids were fortunate or unfortunate to have a kid in the neighborhood that did the 747 nose dive at 600 MPH right into the ground...totally devastated his life, spends most days drooling on the floor and sitting in his messy diaper in an assisted living home.
He started smoking pot at 14, was doing meth and heroin within a year, selling himself to get high to some pretty nasty drug dealers by the time he was 20, contracted some nasty oral and anal STDs, parents are ashamed to talk about it.
He had a heart attack/brain aneurism causing severe brain damage.
Not really sure if he is still in there somewhere, the kids can’t spend too much time looking at him without getting completely freaked out.
His life now really serves as an example to others and it is working so far. It’s sad, and of course, it all just started with “harmlessly smoking weed” one day.
But the completely mangled life he is living today is keeping a lot of other kids “drug free.”
I bet that kid had a beer before he ever smoked pot. How can anyone be sure it wasn’t alcohol that set him down that destructive path?
I wouldn’t. Just pot and up.
> When pot is legal, how do you convince teens to abstain?
You don’t.
Satan’s checklist:
[x] Alcohol is okay. (1930s)
[x] No fault divorce. (1950s)
[x] Teen sex is okay. (1970s)
[x] Gay sex is okay. (1990s)
[x] Males are equivalent to females (Harvard, 2000)
[x] Same-sex marriage is okay. (2010)
[x] Male-Female sex/gender transition by surgery is okay (2015)
[x] Pot is good for everybody (2010’ish)
Well, since we can’t ask him we may never know — What we do know is what he was doing at the end to get DRUGs and not a Bud Light and that was pretty nasty and disgusting things that no teenager should have ever had to endure, ever.
Why exclude alcohol and all its harmful effects on individuals and society?
Lots of bad things out there. Do we ban them all?
“How can anyone be sure it wasn’t alcohol that set him down that destructive path?”
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I don’t think anyone can.
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