[adnam]

@Archio I hate to break it to you, but I was a teenager myself in to the so distant past and I am fully aware of the opportunities available. My point is that I don't want my kids being turned into stoners and that the law should be on MY side, not the guy pushing drugs on them.

[hnpedant]

You appear to be saying that you had the opportunity to use cannabis when growing up, and managed to refrain from turning in to a stoner. That's how I read this comment - my apologies if I have misunderstood you.

I am going to assume that you grew up in a country where alcohol was available to teenagers, to a greater or lesser extent. And yet you also - presumably - managed to avoid turning in to a raging alcoholic.

Despite the availability of drugs and alcohol, you managed to avoid becoming a slave to either of them.

The mere availability of drugs (of any kind) will not immediately turn your children in to stoners, alcoholics and junkies. The causes of addiction are deeper than that.

As you said, you know what it is like to be a teenager. Teenagers experiment with various things that adults would prefer they avoided. Given that fact, let me ask you this:

Assume your children are going to drink underage (it is statistically likely that they will). Would you prefer them to drink a) a bottle of beer that an older friend purchased on their behalf, or b) a jar of moonshine, which was homemade without any quality control, and might contain adulterants?

This is not a rhetorical question, or a snarky one - I'm genuinely curious as to which you would prefer.

> My point is that I don't want my kids being turned into stoners and that the law should be on MY side, not the guy pushing drugs on them.

You seem to be saying that your children will be turned in to stoners if cannabis is easily available to them. Given that alcohol will be available to them, do you worry that they will turn in to alcoholics?

If not, why not?

If so, are you also campaigning to return to the days of alcohol prohibition?

[saturdaysaint]

Are you worried about your kids becoming alcoholics? Or obese sugar addicts? Or chainsmokers? It seems that society has been increasingly successful at regulating those vices, both in the legal sense of the word "regulation" and in the broader sense - by being able to openly study and debate the drawbacks/merits of various "vices", we've been able to come to honest consensuses on each issue that even a teenager can respect.

If weed is forbidden/taboo, there's a good chance that your child will come across a successful/popular/intelligent peer that completely discredits everything you've ever told them about "stoners". My fiance is in medical school at a highly selective school and from interacting with a lot of her peers socially I've been again amazed at how many regular smokers are highly intelligent, driven and successful. Once it's truly out in the open, these successes can have a lot more context and we'll truly be able to study and discuss what truth there is to the stoner stereotype.

[Archio]

>I don't want my kids being turned into stoners [and] the law should be on MY side

Should it? It isn't on your side if they want to (as consenting adults): ride a motorcycle, drink alcohol, go heliskiing, visit a strip club, buy condoms, or go bungie jumping, for example.

Should all potentially harmful activities of any kind be criminalized as well, because you have kids and the law should be on your side?

[adnam]

No parent wants their children to use drugs. In the specific case I gave, the law should back up the parent.

[Archio]

I find this statement highly amusing, as (1) I use cannabis regularly without issue, (2) I've done well in both academic and professional spheres, and (3) both of my parents know and are perfectly fine with my responsible usage.

Perhaps you mean that no parent wants their young child/teenager to use drugs? No one in this thread (or anyone at Meadow) is advocating for that, we are specifically discussing adult use.

If we can take anything away from this extrapolated conversation, it should be that it's important to become educated and informed about topics highly susceptible to misinformation.

[auntienomen]

The law is never going to be on the side of the guy trying to sell drugs to teenagers. Never.

EDIT, for clarity: But no one who advocates legalization is advocating the scenario you describe. Total fantasy.

[adnam]

@hnpedant I'm afraid your comment is full of logical fallacies, and I'm not going to point them out to you, suffice to say that no, that is not what I am saying.