When Your Parents Smoke More Weed Than You Do

When Cannabis is no Longer a “Teen Treat”

What Can You Do if Your Parents Smoke More Weed Than You Do? from CannabisNet on Vimeo.

When we look at countries such a Portugal that decriminalized all drugs, we can see one trend that remains true; kids are less likely to do drugs if drugs are not criminal. It’s a strange occurrence but it has happened in most places that decriminalized drugs. In Portugal, they saw a dramatic decrease in drug use over the period of a decade by shifting their approach from “tough on drugs” to “let’s get educated about drugs.”

The question we must all ask ourselves is why?

There could be various explanations for this occurrence. Firstly, it’s common knowledge that we all go through a “rebellious phase” in our teenage years. When we are young, we are trying to discover our own identities and solidify our own perspective on the world. This means that “what your parents said” becomes less important as you push the boundaries on your own existence. “Don’t do drugs” your parents parroted from the official narrative pushed by the government, a paradigm they swallowed whole like the pharmaceutical pills being sold over the counter.

HAPPY WITH CANNABIS

What do we do as teens? The first moment we are offered drugs, we experience two emotions; fear and excitement. In most cases, our cat-like-teenage curiosity wins and we partake of whatever is offered to us. For most people, this is cannabis since it is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world.

The moment we smoke however, we suddenly realize that all the fear-mongering surrounding cannabis is simply not true. No, I didn’t turn into an “insta-slut” for sparking up, No I didn’t feel the urge to murder my family nor did I become a brain dead zombie from partaking.

This leads us to the next conclusion; “If they lied to us about this, what else did they lie to us about”.

And so the drug consumption habit continues well into our twenties when we start understanding how drugs interact with our bodies. Obviously, this isn’t true for all, but for most of us that went through the rebellious phase, we can relate.

But what happens when you legalize/decriminalize/normalize drug use?

There are two very real things that happen:

We acknowledge that human beings like to alter their brain chemistry
We remove the “rebellion factor” from the equation.

Since 2006, there has been a major shift in the United States in relation to cannabis consumption. Adults are now consuming cannabis at a higher rate than teens for the first time in a long time. The CDC released some data a week back that looks something like this;

The research, released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that only 7.4 percent of Americans ages 12 to 17 smoked marijuana regularly in 2014, a 10 percent decline since 2002. But 8 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds used marijuana regularly in 2014, surpassing use among teens for the first time since at least 2002. (Survey data prior to that year aren't directly comparable, as the methodology changed.)

In other words, adults are now the major demographic when it comes to consuming cannabis. So why is it that teens are less likely to smoke marijuana these days?

Perhaps it could be that now the obscurity of cannabis use is no longer stigmatized, meaning that the “teenage rebellion” would no longer hold merit or perhaps it could be that kids are seeing marijuana as “medicine” as opposed to a drug.

The reason why adults are using cannabis at a higher rate is due to the fact that it is medicine and has helped them where pharma couldn’t. It’s better to smoke a spliff for your pain and feel good, as opposed to dope yourself out with Oxy and be a walking zombie for the rest of the day.

BEER VERSE MARIJUANA

These statistics once again reflects something that I have said for a long time now; “legalizing drugs will not increase use…it could very well do the opposite.”

You see, an educated population can make informed decisions. When the “conversation” surrounding drugs is not held in dark alleys but spoken about openly, you remove the “mystery” and as we know, humans love their mysteries.

This is why the drug war has failed so epically. They ignore the very human characteristic of “wanting to change their perceptions of reality”. Some people like to numb their perception with booze, others like to elevate it with cannabis and others still love to warp it into a psychedelic frenzy. It’s our nature to push the boundaries and the moment we stop ignoring this fact, we can actually educate people on proper drug use. It’s time we have an adult conversation about drug policy and not this “sweep it under the carpet” approach that has been plaguing society for the good part of 45 years.

What If Your Parents Smoke More Cannabis Than You Do?