May I add one other thing? Throughout the times to come, never hesitate to let your daughter know you’re on her side. You may cry about the choices she makes, but you’ll always have her back.
I read somewhere that there was a mother who had a “wayward” daughter. Mom gave her daughter a giftwrapped present. Daughter opened the box, & out fell a rock. Daughter rolled her eyes & said “way to go, Mom.”
She looked back into the box & found a slip of paper that read “this rock took thousand of years to create, & will take thousands of years to completely destroy. When this rock is gone, I will stop loving you.”
I very much agree with Argent Towers. Literally all of my friends smoke pot, and all of them are successful, responsible, and intelligent adults. They have all smoked since they were about 14.
When I was growing up and doing it (a lot), my dad knew about it. He got annoyed with me a couple times for being so “out” about it-- we were practically having blazefests in the front driveway-- but other than that, he didn’t care what I did as long as I excelled at my “job” (getting good grades).
I intend to take this same approach with my future kids. I’ll probably come down on them a lot harder than he did if they’re doing it constantly and with no apparent fear of legal consequence, but I don’t care about the act itself. In fact I don’t care if they do other stuff, as long as they’re responsible about it, and will make it known that if they aren’t, I won’t be there to bail them out.
Your situation sounds a lot like my dad’s 10 years ago. In your shoes, I would tell her she needs to be more careful, and inform her of the legal and academic consequences if she doesn’t (getting financial aid for college with a drug conviction is a bitch). Also tell her it’s really dumb for her to be driving around with weed in her purse, as all she has to do is speed or forget a turn signal to catch a cop’s attention. Tell her what you consider to be responsible use, and ask her to follow those guidelines at least as long as she’s living with you.
Other than that, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I’d rather find a joint in my daughter’s purse than a flask of liquor, if that says anything.
And probably a polygraph. Prior drug use is often an automatic disqualification. At best, it will probably need to have been at least 5 and more like 10 years in the past.
I took her out shopping and after we were done, I asked her what was going on with her, in a non-threatening manner. I told her what I found, and that I was not snooping. She claimed that yes shes smokes occasionally, but does not do it when she is going to be out in public. “The most I do is watch a movie and eat a big bag of popcorn” were her words.I asked her about the depression, and was told that no she did not smoke because of that, she has been feeling better lately but had recently had fights with a couple of her close friends.She knows enough screwed up people who’s only goal is to get high,and assured me she is still maintaining her A average, and does not think she will continue to smoke once she goes away to collage because she likes to be in familiar surroundings when smoking. I pretty much asked her what she was thinking having it in her purse where I could literally stumble across it, and she did answer that as well to my satisfaction.We also talked about the legality of it and reached some common ground. The subject is dropped unless, I see any erratic behavior, or anything more serious than average teenage angst or any dropping of grades. I expect teenagers to experiment, but had better not find it in my house again, and God help her is she ever exposes her sixteen year old sister to it or I think she is doing anything harder.
I think the law enforcement goal could be an important motivator. A co-worker’s boyfriend was hoping for a career in law enforcement, but his prior recreational drug use made that a much more difficult goal to obtain.
Shrug. Believe what you want. I’m nearly smack dab in the middle of the 18-25 generation, and the notion that drugs are ubiquitous is absurd. Certainly, you can find them if you’re curious, but I suspect that applies no matter your age.
Every time a survey comes out it comes out with things like 80 percent of students have tried marijuana, etc. At my high school my senior year every senior was required to take an anonymous survey. They could leave it blank, of course, but they found that out of a graduating class of almost 600, something like 450 claimed to be currently using marijuana.
I’m also smack-dab in the middle of the 18-25 age group. In high school it was everywhere around me, and even now that I’m out of school it’s everywhere around me, regardless of whether or not I or the people I hang out with do it. Maybe you’re just not hangin’ out with the cool kids (I’m joking).
Incidentally, that’s not totally unheard of for people who want to go into law enforcement to be potheads. The guy I used to buy my pot from is currently enrolled in the college’s law enforcement program, and my pothead cousin wants to be a probation officer. I guess they’d know the mentality better, at least.
Qwisp - I think you handled this very well. I recall my parents giving me The Drug Talk, seeing as they’re both potheads. The conversation went something like “Just because we do it doesn’t mean it’s the best thing to do, but if you want to, we just want you to be safe about it. Don’t drive high, don’t go out into the general public high. Don’t do anything unsafe. We’d prefer you to do it at home or somewhere indoors, rather than out there.” I didn’t start smoking pot until well after I’d graduated high school. I think their talk worked, too, because I only do it at home or their house, when I know I have nothing else to do the rest of the night, and I refuse to drive while high.
I’m not sure how to expand on it, really. To me, calling pot a “mainstay of the … generation” and “everywhere” and that my generation has “embraced” it “wholesale” is just plain not true.
I’m not going to claim to be a judge of what is a “mainstay” of my generation, because I’ve experienced diverse enough parts of it to know that there is very little that probably could be considered a mainstay of the entire generation (as with any generation, I’m sure). I’ll freely admit that I haven’t experienced ALL of the various subcultures in my generation, but calling something a “mainstay” implies wide-scale acceptance and use.
tashabot, I don’t consider someone who’s tried it to be embracing it wholesale and accepting it as a mainstay. Maybe I’m not defining those words correctly.
And something tells me that there might be just a touch of confirmation bias going on here.
Let me share my own experience. My highschool friends and I never did any drugs in high school. Didn’t even get drunk. We were a bunch of videogame geeks.
Fast forward 10 years later. 3 out of 5 smoke pot daily. 1 smokes it occasionally. 1 almost never smokes it (But he DID try it).
Now, let me count the number of friends I made after highschool but BEFORE I ever smoked pot and let’s see how they fare:
Juanca: yup. Occasionally. 25 yo
Sergio: nope. 32 yo
M-gal: Occasionally 22 yo
Nat: Occasionally 26 yo
Mikey: regularly 24 yo
Wences: nope 25 yo
Laura: nope 30-40 yo
Paul: regularly 32 yo
K-gal: Occasionally 19 yo
A few years after I left home, one of my brothers started smoking pot.
So, 11 out of 14 of friends ended up smoking pot at least occasionally and only 3 out of 14 supposedly didn’t. 2 out of 3 brothers. We’re scattered in 7 or 8 countries and have been apart since before any of us started.
Pot is widespread. Absolutely, there are certain circles where you won’t find it, even among the 18-25. I do think, however, that 99% of people get offered pot before they get to 25.
There’s no doubt that the use of marijuana is commonplace and ubiquitous with people in a certain age group and it’s something that crosses lines of ethnicity, class and gender.
That’s not to say that everybody of the last two or three generations has tried it (I think about 40% of adults say they’ve tried it, but that’s probably diluted by the numbers of pre-boomer seniors in the sample), but just about everyone has at least been around it or knows somebody who’s tried it. It’s as mainstream as it gets.
I’m just going to say in my circle of friends, in the town I went to college, there were more people in that age group who did pot than didn’t. Probably 8 out of 10. It was ubiquitous.
I’d take issue that pot is ubiquitous, but I’d also raise an eyebrow ( :dubious: ) to Garfield for his almost aggressive denial of the fact that it is widespread.
I’d say at easily 80% of the parties that i go to, there is some form of pot use, and I would say 100% of the parties have somebody there who is currently high, and/or some other form of drug use/drug users. I would definitely say pot use is as accepted as alcohol use, in terms of people who really take issue with it. On the other hand, people smoke marijuana much less frequently, but a LOT of people do it at least occasionally.
As a sample, let me take the people who live in the fraternity house:
I would say around half to 60% use marijuana in a capacity more than “I’ve tried it before”, and many of those with at least some regularity. Outside of the house itself it’ll take a while before I start having difficulty thinking of more people who smoke.
I throw another anecdote in support of Garfield, neither I nor any of my friends used pot even occasionally in high school or college. There were definitely people at the respective schools that used pot, but within my social circle there wasn’t a single one. Unless they were super secretive pot smokers…
You yourself may not use it, nor your circle of friends, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s all around you, whether you happen to be in college, working, both or neither.