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.
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.”
> 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)
Lots of bad things out there. Do we ban them all?
Well according to FR libertarian drug advocates, smoking weed is good for teenagers. Builds character, determination and problem-solving skills.
Teens need something to do while living in their parents’ basement until they are 30-something, so why not be chronically stoned? They will be easier to roll over as Shari’a Law kicks in, and it will all facilitate the MB plan to take over America. “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Have them smoke ten cigarettes at once?
Pot was illegal when I was in high school and it didn’t slow me or my friends down a bit.
If you want to see what society is like with legalized pot, go to Denver. The promotion of pot downtown is now ubiquitous. Kids are impacted by that—it’s the “cool factor.” I’ve been to Denver before and after legalization and the number of homeless and panhandlers downtown has exploded. I don’t think it’s coincidental.
One strategy, while not 100% guaranteed, is usually very effective.
Starting when your kids are very young, point out the bums, the losers, the potheads loitering on the streets. Ask them to describe what they see, and listen carefully, and discuss.
Point being, sure, it’s legal to be a loser. But why would you want to be?
The same easy you get them to abstain from cigarettes and alcohol. Watch them like a hawk. :-)