Culture

A new report from The Partnership at Drugfree.org indicates that marijuana use by teens is on the rise – which makes one wonder what the point of marijuana probation is.

Of course Partnership President Steve Pasierb blames the message that kids are being sent. "Parents are talking about cocaine and heroin, things that scare them," he said. "Parents are not talking about prescription drugs and marijuana. They can't wink and nod. They need to be stressing the message that this behavior is unhealthy."

First off, putting prescription drugs and marijuana in the same sentence is incredibly naïve and shows just how little these people know about the non-toxic nature of cannabis. Parents should be telling their kids the truth: that hard drugs and abusing prescription drugs can be unhealthy, even deadly. But the same simply cannot be said of marijuana.

According to the report, marijuana use by teens in the “past month” is up 19% from 2008 and up 27% from last year. Teens using cannabis more than 20 times a month is also on the rise, almost doubling since 2008. Which means about 1.5 million teens use marijuana 20 or more times a month.

The problem of course is telling your kids that marijuana is just as dangerous as harder drugs, which is just false. If your kids experiment with anything, you want it to be marijuana. It is impossible to overdose and it leaves your brain cells intact.

In a perfect world kids would wait until they are adults to try adult things. But this world isn’t perfect and if your kids try hard drugs they are likely to face some dire consequences, and even have a chance of dying. But if a kid smokes some cannabis all they will get is high and probably hungry.

If they are going to experiment with something, parents should be hoping their kids pick marijuana over anything else.

Source: http://www.columbiatribune.com