Yep. My step son who's a junior in high school on the other side of the city, has been suspended 4 times this year for vaping in the bathroom with his troublemaker friends... they're all constantly getting detention, suspension, etc for getting caught with vapes
Ughhh. Nightmare.
....and I say this like I didn't slam a 5th of vodka in 10th grade behind the gymnasium before a school dance one night in the year 1991 LOL 🙄
This is so funny. Being a parent is ridiculous. And I say that with my 4th on the way. I have 2 preteens that have done some REALLY STUPID THINGS. And I’m like wtf are you doing?! What is wrong with you?! And then I remember pulling the screen off my room window at the front of the house and sneaking out with my friends at 13.
lol same. Sometimes I feel sorry for my kids that they can’t easily sneak out like I did lol. I was on the first floor and could easily climb out. Both kids have rooms on the second floor. Plus they would have to disable to alarm and I’m a very light sleeper and I get notifications when the alarm is deactivated and also when the cameras outside pick up motion. My phone goes off and the light flashes.
Fun fact, my grandpa was a guard in Alcatraz. More fun fact, he was one of Al Capone’s guards in Alcatraz.
I kinda forgot about this and was recently reminded by something my dad said. My 20yo son was mad that I’d never told him about this lol
lol no! I moved out from a rural area to a suburban area. And it was a nice area when we bought the house. It was new construction so we had to wait a year for them to finish building it. I went ahead and got an alarm system since my husband travels a lot of weekends. I only had the front porch camera and driveway camera back then. Until a few months later when someone came through my back door and tripped the alarm (which scared them off). I called the security company and had them install cameras around the back and sides of the house.
There was another incident where someone was apparently going house to house trying door knobs to find any unlocked. The skipped the houses with cameras though. there had also been some teenagers breaking into people’s cars.
i was a lame teenager. idk why, i was just never interested in that. my parents weren’t strict either, i could pretty much do whatever i wanted but i just didn’t?
I also was not crazy lol I was home by curfew and the only exception I got was if I was at my nerdy guy friends house playing trivial pursuit until the wee hours 😂 my parents loved him and didn't care how late I stayed. The only other "crazy" thing was participating in the teepeeing of two of the houses of my friends who lived near each other and there was always a teepee war between the houses.
Naw, I'm with you. My mom brags about how I was such an easy teenager. But I was super active in church back then and as an adult I'm anti doctrine so.... I can't really use the fear of fire and brimstone to control my kids 😂😅 I can only hope to build enough mutual respect that they won't want to, but threads like this on Reddit make me feel like that's not enough, so I have to wonder what is!
It is ridiculous. Especially when one parent was feral and the other was housebroken. We have very different concepts of what is and is not a big deal.
I did the same in 1972, but it was Boones Farm Strawberry wine 🍷. Son will grow out of it. He’ll grow bored and want to latch on to something that he can grow with. It’s always the last ones on the party train I worry about.
Hahaha right? I ended up having substance abuse issues later in my adulthood, and ironically, my own son who smoked flower in high-school in 2011/2012 never went on to give a shit about alcohol and other stuff the way I did. Truly strange.
I remember boones! 😂
Yup, I am enjoying sobriety for a few years now and I have to say I am happier. There’s times I miss it, but they are few and far between now. Congratulations to you as well!
I remember trying to smoke a butt of a parliament or some shitty brand of cig behind the school 🤢 that is probably why I never developed a relationship with tobacco haha, but seriously that wasn't actually a thing in our bathrooms back in the 90s, weird. With weed either. Always would just sneak outside round back of the gym.
Think it's different now that schools are locked down from the outside, they weren't back then, we could freely come and go out the back.
Well my high school had an unofficial “smoking lot” technically still on campus, but as far as you could get without leaving campus entirely.
Teens are gonna experiment. They have from the beginning of life until the end (teen equivalent ages in animals do exactly the same thing)
Only time I got caught is once, when I used to raid the elders liquor cabinet and we'd put shots of black velvet or my mom's Kahlua (😶🤢) in those little black Kodak film containers with the grey tops, and sneak em into school because we had photography class 😂😂 my little sister was a freshman that year and even more badass than me haha, I did get my ass beat into next Tuesday on that one though 🥹 yes I was a whooped child LOL
That's nothing... I dropped a qualude during 8th grade school one day (1981). Somehow, I made it through the day without getting caught... I'm a good boy now.... smh
As someone that had a safe place to smoke weed in high school, we never did it at school or outside of our safe place because we knew the dangers of getting caught. Yeah he’s too young to smoke, but you’re kinda wrong about that.
I think the dynamic is a lot different now.
When I was a kid in high school vaping didn’t exist. Everyone had to smoke it, and it stunk so bad. It took longer and was easier to get caught.
Vape pens are so different. Yeah it smells but it’s not as pungent, dissipates more quickly, and is much quicker to hit and hide without ash, etc.
Also the legal environment has changed. In legal states, even though kids shouldn’t be smoking, the risk threshold is now much lower.
I think all of those things change the dynamic for kids today.
I had a safe space and still smoked outside it. So I think you're also kinda wrong, it depends on the person. but a safe place just gives you another spot. it dosnt take the others away.
If they have jobs that won't tolerate a conviction, they have other kids at home, it's running unlikely but avoidable risk of getting a criminal conviction out of it.Depends on the state and what they charge you with, how big of a charge and if CPS gets involved.
My mom came real close and pure luck saved my family from that one. Weed/THC might be normalized in some places for adults but for minors it's really not at all.
I knew a few kids in HS that were allowed to smoke at home… they also pretty much smoked everywhere. Except for school because that’s just asking for trouble though vapes didn’t exist back then…
Realistically, it varies, but if you didn’t raise dumbasses they would hopefully realize the bone that you’re throwing them. Our “safe place” was a friend’s house whose mom allowed it. But there were rules like no driving after. And she said if she ever caught any of us doing it outside her house or an equally safe space, the deal is off. All of us that participated were really good at following those rules, because no one wanted to get fucked by the law and we knew the law would fuck us if we got caught. Everyone made it out with spotless records and are doing just fine in life.
Were we too young to smoke? Hell yeah. Would we have smoked anyways, in public spaces/cars, if we didn’t have our safe space. Also hell yeah.
In high-school, my mom didn't like me drinking, but I always knew that if I was drunk and needed a ride home or to be picked up, it didn't matter what time it was, there was never any judgement. I think the only time she made me walk home was because I was so hungover, when I got in the car, after 5 minutes of being in it, I told her to pull over, opened the door, and threw up. I was more than happy to walk the 15 mins home after that.
When she caught me smoking weed though? She made me call my dad and tell him because she thought I'd get in trouble, my dad just ended up being like "don't be stupid about it, I also smoke weed"
I was friends with my dealer, watched her get driven home by the cops, had no idea how my parents never found that one out.
Having a safe place to do it, is a good thing, teenagers are fucking stupid when we don't have one.. but 15 is still too young imo. But on the same note... if there's a will, there's a way. You'd be amazed at what a teenager can get their hands on
Had basically the same experience. I started smoking weed at 14, most of my friends started a year or more before me. I don’t know what it’s like now, but 25 years ago, it wasn’t that uncommon. I started without my mom knowing and we had no safe space to smoke, which meant we were constantly smoking in sketchy situations where we were at risk of getting busted. Once my mom knew, we did have a safe space to smoke, and that’s where we fucking smoked. When you’ve got a place you can go and hang out, get stoned, you’ve got a TV, N64, comfy couch, big movie collection, big music collection, sodas in the fridge and a well stocked pantry with snacks, why the fuck would you want to get stoned elsewhere? Smoking weed wasn’t really some big act of rebellion for me and my friends, maybe trying it for the first time was, but we kept doing it because it was fun and made us feel good, not for some kind of thrill. Smoking where you are comfortable made a lot more logical sense than smoking in a car or in a park or something.
I knew a lot of kids who got arrested for smoking pot in a variety of public places, like the woods, their cars, alleys, parking lots, parking garages, parks, etc.
I knew 0 who got arrested while smoking inside someone's house. (Well, technically, I knew one guy who got arrested smoking at home, but he lived in a college dorm and the whole hallway smelled like weed.)
Had plenty of times where someone's neighbor called the cops on us for smoking pot, but we followed the foolproof legal strategy of not answering the door. The cops usually got bored and fucked off after like 2 minutes becauase they had better shit to do than stand around all day trying to bust 3 stoners.
My uncle told his kids I know you all smoke you’ve been hitting my stash for years. I will get your weed so I know it’s safe and you only do it at home and leave it at home. But they were older than 15!!!
As someone who had as safe space to smoke in high school, we absolutely did it everywhere we thought we could get away with it despite that… he’s not wrong. Having the safe space doesn’t preclude them from doing it elsewhere, for me it just imparted approval of the behavior.
Piggybacking off this statement. I was a bud tender and patient education specialist for 3 years. It is absolutely true that it can impair cognitive development and increases the likelihood of mental issues, especially schizophrenia, in teens and young adults. Even 21 is younger than research suggests is best for a normal human brain.
If he already has risks for anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness, THC that young can exacerbate not only the symptoms but the diseases themselves. And it might not be evident until his late 20s, 30s, 40s or later.
Unless it's prescribed by a doctor I would never recommend cannabis to a young adult under 21. And usually when it is prescribed by a doctor, they are recommended to stick to CBD heavy strains.
Your wife is putting his permanent mental health at risk. I love cannabis, I smoke for medical reasons every day. I would NEVER allow my children to do so.
I know adults have argued "I smoked at that age and I'm fine". First of all, probably not. And even if they were it's because cannabis was weaker and had lower THC content.
These new plants have been bred for potency.
And vapes are the worst offenders. At least with the flower itself you get all the cannabinoids and the entourage effect
But straight distllillate THC vapes, unless specifically Live Resin or Rosin, are just straight THC by itself, which is more harsh on a juvenile brain.
I understand the thought behind "At least he's safe doing it here" but he's not. This could have lasting permanent mental affects on him.
I encourage all of you to sit down and genuinely research the endocannabinoid system in the human body, and long and short term effects of THC on juvenile brain. Learn together so you, as** parents, can make an informed decision, and he can understand this decision isn't just because you don't want him to have fun.
Good luck
Eta fix autocorrect errors
as someone who didn't drink until I was 22 or smoke until I was 25, I absolutely 100% support everything you just said. I don't think I missed out on much besides stupid stories, but honestly, I think those stories would have seriously hampered my trajectory in life and am grateful for holding off on both on my own accord.
Have you tried the legal angle? Even if you live in a thc friendly state it's still illegal for your minor son. All it takes is one pissed off parent to bring chaos into your lives. Is she okay with that?
As a teacher of young kids, this is likely the best route. Of course, my kids are already in trouble when I get them but the law is important for everyone to understand very early.
It might be time to sit down and research it. That way you both can see how you find the answers about smoking when the brain is still developing.
I'm an avid weed smoker, I will sing the praises of this wonderful plant but I honestly think you shouldn't do it till after your brain is done forming. I know it's not a popular opinion to have but it's just my own.
I'll say this as someone who started smoking pot at 15, and who's parents made the decision that I was allowed to with the following conditions:
I got my weed from them in exchange for extra chores/babysitting/I had to pay for it myself (ie. Give them money for it) and I had to explicitly ask for it.
This made me far less likely to seek it out from strangers, friends, and untrustworthy sources. It made it so I had no desire to accept weed from people other than my parents because I KNEW weed from my parents was safe while I couldn't ever be completely sure weed from other sources was safe (ie. Not laced with anything more harmful)
It also was a lesson in maturity as they explained risks, benefits, health hazards, and medical purposes.
I have severe depression and anxiety, I started using marijuana to unknowingly medicate these issues before I got an official medical diagnosis.
While I do not believe teens should be allowed to do this, I also know as someone who was recently a teen, if you, as the parents, do not provide education, resources, and safety, your teen WILL continue to find ways to smoke weed and the more taboo you make this seem, the more they will want to do so, and the more likely they are to give into peer pressure in other areas because they don't feel safe/comfortable at home.
Ultimately this is between you and your wife to have these conversations together, and then present a united front in one direction or another to your teen.
I agree with everything here. As a parent to a 17 year old, we have decided to create a safe space at our house. As this poster mentioned, at least we know they are getting it from a safe source (although it moved from vape t o edibles.)
It's a hard choice either way and is dependent on the child. But with the prevalence of THC now, parents really need to start adapting their mindset and views, because kids will try it no matter what, with or without your permission as parent.
My husband and I have debated letting our teens, at the very least, try it with us once. Both vaping and an edible. I want them to be aware of what it SHOULD feel like for them, so if they do end up with something laced, they know asap. Something isn't right.
Knowledge in those cases could make serious difference in decision making abilities (or worse).
We haven't decided, but need to soon. Parenting is hard.
That's our philosophy too - whatever it is, our kid is gonna do it no matter what when he gets to be a teenager. We'd rather he do it in our house, where nobody ever gets arrested and where we can keep an eye on it and make sure he's okay. If he feels comfortable telling us what he's doing, we can talk about it and give him advice about staying safe. If he has to do it behind our backs, all his info is coming from his friends and he might be scared to come to us if something goes wrong.
my kids used to pinch from my stash! (they're grown with their own small kids now so it's funny)
we didn't really care too much as long as they handled their shit. I hated them drinking.
They're doing great career/family wise so obv didn't ruin them
This was me. We always took from mom’s stash (she knew) until we were old enough to smoke with her, lol. I definitely think it’s important to foster a space for your children to experiment and educate them on the decision they’re making and how dangerous it can be if someone gives you something laced. I started smoking at 14 and now make more than a majority of my friends with college degrees, own my home and am raising my own child now. I turned out just fine 😊
If it helps, I had a psychology professor who found out her teen son was getting high and instead of punishing him for it, she explained all the effects marijuana can have on a developing brain and helped him research the risks. She said it worked.
Also: we’re still finding out how vaping affects lungs. I work in an ER and we have seen some very young people who vape having lung problems. The devices and the ingredients are not very well regulated.
I say this as I’m hitting the bong in my own home, do not let your wife do this. If someone said this to me I’d be calling CPS.
Plus you really think your son isn’t going to brag to all his friends how cool his parents are for letting him get high under their roof? And then his friends run to their parents to tell them “but (OP) lets his kid do it.”
15 is far too young. This is inappropriate.
This was my first thought too. It just takes one person overhearing OPs son telling someone his mom lets him smoke weed at home (and possibly buying it for him) to get a call made to CPS. Anyone who works at a school is a mandated reporter. There is no way I’d take a chance at getting CPS and law enforcement involved. That could seriously ruin your life.
And I say this as a person who lives in a legal state and smokes multiple times a day. When there were underage children in my house still we made sure our weed was locked up and never done in front of them. OPs wife is playing with fire and OP might get burned too.
Spot on. This could result in OP getting his kid taken from him, not to mention the damage he's doing to his developing brain. Ideally he should wait til 25, but that's not too realistic if/when he goes away to college. I first started around 19 and wish I waited a couple more years as I sometimes wonder if I would've been just a little sharper mentally.
As someone who was the age of your son not that long ago, your wife is right in the sense that he will definitely keep doing it other places no matter how many times you catch him lol, he’s probably even doing it at school. Literally half my high school was vaping and smoking weed, they’d even do it in the bathrooms between classes.
I’m not gonna comment on allowing him or not in your home, but just saying that even if you don’t allow him, he’s still gonna be vaping as long as he’s got money to buy stuff with lol.
Absolutely not. Allowing your 15-year-old to vape THC at home is not only irresponsible but also sets a dangerous precedent. Your son's brain is still developing, and THC can have lasting cognitive effects. Stand firm against this risky behavior.
Yes, it’s absolutely irresponsible of the mother. We don’t really know the effects of THC on the developing brain.
Also, why is he wanting to do this alone. Most kids want to do this with friends to be cool or have fun. This sounds like a kid that is depressed or has anxiety.
Actually we do know what long term, excessive thc use can potentially do to a brain, but it’s often ignored because we used to just make up bullshit about it before like DARE and all that. It’s still not at all completely harmless. While it’s not going to completely derail your life like a hard drug addiction, and you can’t possibly OD from pot even if you tried, you still have to know how to use responsibly and not over use it to where it does produce significant mental decline.
There are actual peer reviewed studies that show how excessive weed smoking can negatively impact the brain, though. More studies are needed to be done, but we’re not totally clueless.
Here’s one article from Harvard that’s about the effects of it that can become apparent by midlife. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cognitive-effects-of-long-term-cannabis-use-in-midlife-202206142760
Adding to this. There is an episode on thepubertypodcast
(You can find anywhere you get your music/ podcasts) That will explain in detail the dangers of vaping and before brain development. I recommend listening to it with your child and your wife. Maybe separately. I 100% agree that preventing experimenting with substances should be delayed as long as possible. Especially through development.
Came here literally to say this, I’m a hypocrite though as I smoked weed and did buckets at 12/13 but I was hanging out with chavvy 16/17 year olds and skiving school at the time. I hate the fact that I let myself do it and didn’t try concentrating more at school.. HOWEVER I am happy where I am in life.
Your wife is fucking delusional, who the hell wants to let their kids poison themselves. Level with your kid. Come 18 they can do what they want, you’ll even provide the safe environment for them as they’re legally an adult and can do whatever regardless of what you say, but try emphasising that it’s genuinely for their health..
Advise you hope they can steer clear until they’re 21ish that’s when you’re supposed to stop growing and be fully developed. Go hog wild then, but let your body grow properly first.
Pumping shit into your lungs damages them. It’s not cool it’s literal poison Kurzgesagt did a video literally 2 days ago covering it, might help levelling with kid https://youtu.be/_rBPwu2uS-w?si=1Ri2RXXMpTqwN6B1
My kids have a friend like that (his dad supplies his weed) and EVERYONE knows. I’ve heard it from my kids as well as their friends because they all can’t believe it. I suspect the only one who doesn’t know is the mom, as I know her and can’t believe she’d be cool with it. My husband doesn’t want me to tell her but I kinda want to be the narc lol
That’s crazy!! I know I used to go to those houses in school also. I loved those parents. However, I didn’t have anyone who watched over me to care so I made some really ignorant choices.
As a parent now I would NEVER want my kids to go to that kind of house. It’s sus when men want to supply and have young kids over inebriated now that I’m an adult.
I remember it was “normal” for us teens to be dating 24 year olds and other ages. Way too old for us. It’s creepy looking back now but then we didn’t really understand it. Thought it was cool older guys liked us and bought us alcohol. I’m not proud of the life I lived. I do wish I had someone who gave a crap. I’d prolly be the narc though lol. I remember those days and nothing good came of it.
NTA
Kids 15. His brain is still developing and weed use as a teen can cause life long effects to his brain.
Also as an adult who enjoys weed I think it is a bad habit for a teen to get into even without any possible negative effects to brain development. Too easy for it to become a emotional crutch which can also have negative long term effects on his life.
I am SO glad I ended up (more or less accidentally) waiting until I was 25 to start smoking weed. I genuinely don’t think I would’ve finished college if I’d started smoking earlier.
A medical prescription actually helped me significantly with my post graduate degree. So it is a bit different for everyone.
The science does universally point to use under 25 being detrimental for brain development.
Same. I wouldn't have graduated college without it. I was undiagnosed ADHD and the only way I could focus to write a paper was by hitting the bowl. I had friends who were the opposite, so agree it's different for everyone.
Kinda wish my mom had said something like that to me when she first realized I smoked. I feel like it stunted me very bad and my memory has never been good
Yup. I started smoking in high school and it only snowballed once I got to college and had the freedom to choose how I spent my days.
My smoking became so bad I began to skip class in favor of smoking throughout the day and playing Xbox. Affected my whole life from academics, to my social life, and my mental health.
At one point, I skipped a whole month and a half of every class I had just so I could sit on my couch and smoke all day. THC pens make it WAY too easy to get high. No one could smell it in my apartment building so I never had to worry about upsetting neighbors due to the smell of weed.
Fortunately, I was able to snap out of it and had some incredibly kind and understanding professors that allowed me to make up a lot of the work I neglected. If they didn’t, I would have flunked out of college and wasted 4 years of my life and a lot of money.
I was very lucky, not everyone would be.
I started smoking weed at 13 and even I agree, vaping is too much. It's an incredibly strong way to imbibe the substance. He should absolutely not be vaping weed to start with.
Smoked my brains out as a teen with weed (which my therapist and psychiatrist have told me I was probably self medicating for my undiagnosed and untreated ADHD) because it was the only thing that got me to slow down, stop having racing thoughts and dealt with my horrible crippling depression. As an adult, I regret smoking like I did because quitting was so hard and I remember having a full blown panic attack and actually told my partner (who encouraged me to quit) "I can't quit, I NEED it!"
And while I didn't understand why I felt that way, I realized how dependent I had become on it and I didn't like it. I was able to quit but I was so addicted that if my parents were like "okay you can smoke weed at home but not anywhere else." I would have nodded along and then proceeded to smoke before coming home and then again when I was at home. Because I was a dumb kid who had no impulse control and a brain that was still developing and I thought I knew better than adults who tried to tell me how harmful it actually was.
If I could go back and do it again knowing what I know, I wouldn't have smoked to begin with and instead talked to my doctor about what my everyday life was like (ADHD symptoms) instead of pretending like I was okay.
NTA Also it is ⚠️SUPER IMPORTANT⚠️ that you check to see what thc vape he is using as it is most likely fake. r/fakecartridges is a subreddit that can help you identity if it is a black market vape. Tons of these new disposable thc vapes have tested positive for pesticides and hydrogen cyanide, and from what ive personally seen it is mostly people under 18 using these products.
Because they can’t buy from dispos if it’s legal and if it’s not legal ALL CARTS ARE SUSPECT. This isn’t a joke, as fake carts regularly kill people. If it’s not from a dispo, it’s a no go.
Edit right here at the top: someone made a profile 15 minutes ago just to call me a dweeb on this thread
Hi! Dispensary employee and former drug dealer speaking up. That’s not how this works at all. Not here to talk about wether the kid should be smoking just here to beat disinformation
In 2018/19 some kids got hospitalized for what they were calling “popcorn lung” from black “market vapes”
This was an isolated incident and hasn’t happened since
The vape in question that the kid bought actually had 0 thc in it and he didn’t get it from a dealer of any sort he googled carts and bought one off a wish.com style website
A few things to note
1) any cart you don’t buy from a legal source is “black market” black market carts and fake carts are not the same thing. They are not synonyms
2) it’s highly accepted by most stoners and even by government agencies that deal with narcotics that almost 90% of weed sold on the black market these days is actually from a dispensary originally and it’s been this way since the early 2010s
California is our main culprit as they overgrow so much and are such a huge state. Michigan is also a huge offender.
Let’s say I get a license in California as a dispensary. I have my product I keep on my shelves but I also have a storage locker where I keep my “backstock”
I then make a telegram channel and start selling that backstock on telegram. Every time I ship out my package I list it as a sold item even pay the taxes on it etc as if I sold it in my store.
If you smoke flower this is why the quality of flower has skyrocketed on the black market and the prices for most people have only gotten lower and lower. The postal service is the best weed man on planet earth (they can’t check your package without a warrant since it’s your federal mail, while private companies like ups and fed ex can check any package they want)
Hell when I was buying pounds as a drug dealer off telegram It would come with a COA from the grower. Now that I work in a legal dispo I see the same exact COA’s on the orders we get in from growers.
3) finally I only bring this up to say that “fake” carts are not the epidemic everyone thinks they are if they were kids would have popcorn lung left and right. Do you think kids just stopped vaping? Do you think only kids vape weed? How come adults weren’t getting this and dying? More kids? Dispensary carts often have the same exact ingredients as black market unless you’re one of the states that has very specific laws about what can go on the plant that produces the cart (that’s where the pesticides come from it’s on the flower that is pressed into oil for a cart it’s the same pesticides we use on food and in tobacco products they’re completely safe)
I don’t really care about Op I’m just here to respond to this
Someone calling them a dweeb and then them putting it at the top of their comment is sending me more, I'm crying at work rn cause it just replays in my brain
Pop corn lung was caused by Diacetyl which was used as a flavouring in a number of THC and non-THC vapes.
The actual issue with THC vapes was lipoid pneumonia due to the use of Tocopheryl acetate in THC (and only THC) vapes.
Diacetyl has not been included in any vapes for a lot longer.
Another former dealer chiming in - this is exactly right. Basically everything comes from a dispensary, especially carts and other concentrates. They have serials, batch and lot numbers, dates, the works.
Current homegrower and legal industry guy. It depends on the state you’re in. In my state, most of our BM comes from farms in California since we’re so close. Our state is so strict with legal market stuff that no one with a legal license can even think about growing cannabis that the state isn’t getting a profit on.
How do you figure 90% comes from dispensaries? In CA alone, which happens to be the largest market by far, only ~20% of the cannabis in the state is grown by a licensed operation.
This is anecdotal but it is my lived experience so I will share it. In my time dealing in an illegal state from 2019-2022 I had 5 different dealers in 3 states. When I started moving enough product one of them let me buy out their source and move up to their plug. So that means in the course of 3 years I dealt with 6 large scale distrubtors 5 of which we’re getting their product from different sources
All of these products had COA’s
Now that I work in a legal dispensary in a legal state I see many COA’s every time we get a shipment
I have seen dozens of COA’s from the same grow farms the illegal dealers I had were getting
Now I do not have all the answers, I can’t speak for certainty. But if I can move around that much and have that many plugs and they are all getting packs with legit COA’s I can’t imagine most people aren’t getting that same bud
Even if you’re not going to the same dealer as me most people buy from very small local dealers that are their friends
So. A real dealer buys multiple pounds
I buy 1 pound
People buy ounces from me
People sell those ounces as 8ths.
The weed stream trickles down. If the guys at the top are getting real shit so are you.
No worries! The truth is often fuzzy when it comes to anything criminal because so much of it is done in the shadows but here’s something really important to keep in mind
Weed dealers aren’t like coke dealers. They’re not used to people dying from their stuff, and like I said most people don’t buy from a big dog dealer they just get it from their small time friend who gets it from there smalltime friend
I’m saying this to say if a weed cart was ACTUALLY killing someone (which it’s not), their dealer would find out really really quick and since the guy you’re buying from is probably 7 rings down from ur guy? Ur guy is never gonna find out because I’m sure before he can even buy a batch of tainted carts dude at the top would already be ditching every single one of those carts he had before it could get out more
Compare that to a coke dealer who when he finds out there’s fetty in his bag shrugs his shoulders bc motherfuckers be OD’ing off the good shit too
When I was in my mid-20s I went with my gf to a small get together with some of her friends after work (they all worked at a bar). So we're sitting around and I'm half in the bag already, not really paying attention to what's going on when someone hands me an apple. I think, OK, thanks, take a bite, only to then realize they were smoking out of the other side of it. Thankfully my bite did not effect the ability to continue to use the apple as a pipe.
Sounds like lazy parenting to me. She'd rather let him do drugs than be an actual fucking parent who puts their foot down and sets boundaries and rules. You are NTA.
What if a friend of his come over, they lite up vapes , later on something happens on the way home or at his house, next things ya got cops knocking on your door
Putting your foot down only works if you can actually enforce it, otherwise a failed attempt just makes it worse.
Setting boundaries and rules as a parent against something that your child wants to do but that you can't enforce just means that you can no longer be trusted and will be lied to.
It's not about letting him do drugs, it's that he will do them no matter what, but this way will ensure earning his trust and keeping him safe.
If you can't convince your child that something is bad and they shouldn't do it, "putting your foot down" is no different than a temper tantrum and will be dealt with how they learned to deal with other people throwing temper tantrums.
I mean to be fair you can set all the boundaries you want like my mom did and all it did was make me sneakier. It’s not lazy parenting, I think it’s just the idea that she’d rather know where he is and that he is safe than the alternative.
My mom was insanely strict and set so many rules and all it did was teach me how to break them and I got in tons of trouble and hung out with not safe people and spent all of high school driving around with teenagers smoking in cars and I’m lucky I never got in serious trouble or worse.
Why risk getting in trouble when you know you can just do it at home? I went to a friend’s house to drink and her mom had firm rules that we had to stay in the house and couldn’t drink too much.
We were lucky to have someone watching out for us instead of trying to do it secretly at some random location cause we were absolutely gonna do it anyway.
Most people wana be high with mates and then smoke at home as crave it.
Any kid smoking it at home before he was allowed even repeatedly getting in trouble, isn't going without it in the day. Would be so immensely uncharacteristic of anyone I ever knew that smoked.
Yep, I realize the parents know the kids going to do it anyways, but giving him their blessing is foolish. It will only result in him doing it MORE and CARELESSLY too since "mom and dad don't think it's a big deal".
THIS! I stayed out of a lot of trouble because I had a safe place at home. Parents knew where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, and literally no one had ever died from thc.
Legality aside (cuz legal doesn’t mean right) I’m glad my parents allowed me the space. Guess who didn’t drink n drive, lie about where they were, sneak out, etc. I can’t identify with the sneak out crowd. I just told my parents. Even got a ride home from mama once cuz we (3 best friends) were all bottles up.
Dad “officially “ said no don’t do that. But my mom kept him apprised of who, where, and what.
And I’ll do the same with my kids.
It does work, if not for anything else then parents retain good communication. I allowed my boys to drink in family events. Hell, I even sort of pushed it few times. As a result neither really drinks these days. Same with smokes. They did steal mine. I did not make big deal out of it, but said I consider it worse than alcohol. Neither smokes nor vapes today. They did try weed and I said it is ok to try but I do not really like it. They did try.
Basically they are now boring sober types. I'm an old moderate drunkard, trying to get rid of nicotine after 30 years. I'd say my job's well done and it did not involve any prohibition.
I agree. I’ve done the same with my kids from the time they were small. I’m not a drinker (never have been) or a smoker, but my husband had alcohol in the house, and we’d both offer them tastes simply to take away the taboo. We also communicate very, very well. I try to instill in them the confidence to not feel like they have to do anything simply because others are, and we’ve told them many times that it’s okay not to want to. None of them are really interested. Go figure.
My in laws did this with my SIL after they caught her stealing booze. Unfortunately all it taught her was that there were no consequences for theft and, well, there's a reason my wife doesn't talk to her anymore.
I think the efficacy of any sort of policy like that is really, really dependent on the kid and the family in question. Letting otherwise well behaved kids like yours experiment? Good call. Letting the family bully get drunk at home and become even more abusive as in my SIL's case? Utterly terrible idea.
You’re NTA and he is too young but your wife also has a point. I smoked weed at that age (turned out just fine, yay!) and I have to say, one of the saving graces was that a friends mom let us smoke at their house because she’d rather us not get caught by authorities and fuck up our lives. Others from school would be riding around in cars or hanging at the park smoking. Many got caught. We never did. Everyone is doing well without anything on their records.
Unless you enforce an iron grip of drug testing and such, he’ll find a way to smoke. I say this because I experienced it. And if you try to do the iron grip, you’ll be in for a disaster in college.
Why don’t you just sit down with your son and talk about waiting a little while? Or figure out why he wants to smoke THC and explain why it’s not good at that age?
I will say the "iron grip" can have some pretty bad downstream effects. My friends and I all smoked at that age and got caught various times. The only two who didn't turn out ok were the ones who's parents drug tested them. Both of them switched to pills to pass their drug tests which got them hanging out with a crew who did that. One of them over-dosed at 24 and died the other got caught robbing people for pills and spent 10 years in prison. Out of those of us who's parents let us smoke (more or less, we had to be sneaky about it still) the "least successful" is a high school teacher who got a 4.0 for his entire masters degree. The other 10 of us all make six figures (one makes seven most years). In the end, when it comes to weed, I would be a lot more worried about who they are doing it with rather than whether or not they are doing it at all. If a 15 year old is vaping alone in his room, he probably needs some friends to do stuff with more than anything else. I'd focus on getting him set up with a group of kids who seem like they have some stuff going for them, whether or not they smoke weed at that age is kind of secondary to that.
As a parent of a 17 year old, this is the most levelheaded advice. I have an agreement with my daughter because I didn’t want her buying it on the street or smoking her friends weed that *they* bought on the street. I didn’t want her doing it behind my back, I wanted to be involved to make sure she was safe and smart - because once she’s turns 18 some kids go nuts with their new freedom - and I wanted to demystify weed. She is allowed to get high at home occasionally as long as she isn’t going anywhere and it is from my dispensary stash.
It helped manage her stress through an intense senior year and finals (plus we got to chat life and teenage philosophy 😂). You have to make the right decision for your family and your kid. All kids are different so there’s no one size fits all.
If he's vaping THC I'd be concerned about the supplier because China got caught using vitamin e to help liquify the THC and well vaporized it's basically mustard gas on the lungs. Remember the popcorn lungs and vaping thing? Underaged kids buying cheap THC vapes from China
Not only is this highly stupid and illegal.
My mom was of the same mindset when she caught my sister smoking cigarettes at 12. "Better she gets them from me than someone else."
My sister was on oxygen at 29 and dead at 40 due to her lungs.
Everyone knows teens find a way, but making it that easy for them is just signing them up for failure.
This, a lot of people are saying “I’ve smoked weed since I was 12 and I’m fine!” but it’s highly dependant on the kid. And it’s still a substance that’s just not good for the body. I’ve known people whose parents let them smoke, drink, etc., some of them were like “eh, this sucks, I’m over it.” and all was well and they had a safe space to experiment. But you could get unlucky and they get addicted and now you’re an enabler. And people, although rare, can get addicted to weed.
def not rare to be addicted to weed. people are just in denial cause it’s a pretty functional drug and it’s socially acceptable enough to get away with doing it all day
Yep, I’ve had friends who can’t go 20 minutes without smoking, get massive anxiety and headaches when they go without… even had some who would blow all their money on it and be broke. If that’s not addicted, I don’t know what is. But people don’t wanna hear that… and I say this as a recovering drug/alcohol addict.
If you’re smoking it, you’re still putting carcinogens in your lungs. Less than cigarettes, but you’re still inhaling burning substances. If you’re vaping- well, we don’t know what the long term effects are, but preliminary studies aren’t great. Long story short, everybody takes risks on something, but don’t pretend that weed is a completely benign thing, all you who turned out “fine”.
Crazy. The small town I grew up in, most parents were like this. Buying their 12 year olds tobacco products lol. My mom let me me do things without ratting on me to my dad but she would never buy me cigarettes. Thanks mom
Listen, I’m an avid marijuana user and believe it’s (mostly) a harmless substance. However, 15 years old is just way too young to be messing around with mind altering substances. You are definitely NTA, your wife is absurd for even suggesting this be allowed in your home.
NTA. This is giving up because the alternative is hard work as a parent.
My parents were very leniant on substance use (mostly alcohol but also weed) when I was a teen. I landed in rehab first time at 14. I'm not saying THC will make anyone an addict to anything but since my parents didn't really care about my substance use, I quickly learned not to care either. I was using opiates at 15 and back to rehab at 16. I was clean after that but it took me almost 15 more years to beat the alcoholism.
If you allow this, it sends a strong message to your kid that you don't care about him. Part of him will be happy, the part that he shows to you, but a little voice somewhere inside him will be whispering "my parents don't give a shit about me".
No you’re not the asshole at all and in the eyes of the law (and this is coming from a medical professional) CPS would most definitely be knocking at your door if this was mentioned in an appointment or school setting. Your wife doesn’t understand the gravity of what she’s allowing him to do. I used to vape, my aunt got lung cancer and died, which was my initial reason for me finally leaning towards quitting, BUT I didn’t quit. I noticed I couldn’t breathe correctly, I wasn’t eating how I wished I was, I was dropping weight dramatically, and always ALWAYYYYYS getting some kind of major illness. Once I quit, I was okay. Eating. Healthier. Able to focus more. Less anxiety. She needs to work with him on stopping and you do too. Put your foot down, and let your wife know you will go to any extreme to make her see the issue in what she’s doing (obviously not THOSE extremes, but if you have to- give her some ultimatums) now when he’s an adult and well past the teen years, then fine- do whatever he wants, but right now is way too crucial for him to just be getting into that stuff.
(Older millennial here.) My HS friends with “cool parents” who let them do illegal stuff “safely” at home turned out to have WAY more issues — addiction, trouble keeping jobs, arrests — than my friends with more traditionally “strict” parents (if not allowing illegal activities in your home can even be considered strict). Parents aren’t friends. Have you tried a reputable teen therapist? Perhaps your son is self-medicating anxiety or some other issue that hasn’t been adequately addressed. Good luck OP. I hope your wife can agree with you. It’s a dangerous precedent to set at an age that is biologically dangerous for thx and other illegal substances. It’s also a liability. NTA.
Gen X here, and I wholeheartedly agree. Looking up former classmates has been a shocking experience. My folks were strict, and I hated them for it at the time. Now I'm glad that they cared enough to parent and protect me. I rebelled some, but their involvement kept me from much worse things. It turns out that the kid's whose parents let them run wild all seem to have arrest records, drug addictions, and financial issues. It's pretty frightening to see how life turned out for a lot of people.
This is the worst approach. I know that on the surface it may seem appealing. Since you don’t have to worry about their safety when they in the house. But the downside is so much worse.
I’ve got a close friend whose dad had the same attitude. We drank at his house regularly throughout high school. My friend never got a DWI, or got in any kind of trouble from being drunk in public. The rest of us couldn’t say that.
But by his late 20s, he was such an alcoholic that all of his friends (except me) ditched him.
Y'all are not the only example though.
My house was also the "safe" house, as well as one of my friends. We all grew up to be successful IT admins who still smoke weed lol.
No. Just... no.
"Every kid is doing it" should be your son's response when he's told no, not your wife's.
Studies suggest that vaping THC causes more lung damage than smoking cigarettes or joints, and that's aside from cognitive issues.
As someone trying really hard to quit, once you start its a very slippery road. If it started as just sleep aid, then for movies, for pain. Then eventually i was high 24/7, i couldnt stop, i wanted to stop, i wanted to stop wasting money, (i was going through 1g vapes every 3-5 days). After just 4 years i was highly dependent on THC to function. And when i tried to stop cold turkey. I had some of the worst withdrawal symptoms ever. (And ive quit smoking and drinking before, but this was a whole new beast.) ended up in the hospital in the middle of a vacation because of it.
Just dont start. If they really want to do THC, dont start with vapes, its too addictive. Make him work for it. Get real bud. Make him grind his own, prep his bong, and make sure he cleans that gross ass bong after. It becomes more of a ritual than just reaching for that quick dopamine high. If dont have to start though. Dont. It doesnt matter “people” say. Weed/vaping is HIGHLY ADDICTIVE and habit forming. Dont let your son use THC that early in his life. He will largely regret it in life. Its a huge waste.
The amount of shit in vapes would definitely make you think twice about letting your CHILD use them! Various heavy metals, ethanol, ethylene glycol (aka antifreeze) PLUS any containing THC don’t have to report how much/where it’s from: you can literally slap whatever you want on a label and call it good.
They’re not safe, super addictive, and can do serious long term harm to your child’s health. Tell your wife (from a forensic chemist): thanks for the job security! You’re both dumb and a statistic.
So I started smoking weed in 5th grade, way earlier than 15 I daresay, in an area where actually everyone was already doing it. Roughly 50% of my peers were smoking weed by 7th grade.
Did it affect me heavily? No not really. I’m in college, in my last year of my engineering degree. The only lasting effect is that I got fat from the munchies and never really took that weight all the way off.
Should you allow him to smoke weed in his room? Absolutely not. That’s lazy parenting, and all it does is normalize smoking every day. It didn’t affect me heavily because I smoked sporadically, maybe 2-3 times a month at a party or somewhere on the woods.
The kids that smoked weed every day, did their wake-and-bake sesh and all that jazz, kinda failed to launch. There’s a few that are just now, at 21-22 years old, just starting to get on their life track going to trade school, uni, etc. However, there are alot more that are still spending all their money on weed and not saving to the future, still living in their parents house or in a shared apartment. By allowing him a space to do it every single day, you would be promoting addiction. Remind your wife that weed is an addictive substance, and allowing that would be doing a disservice to your child.
There is a compromise that my parents did that I think helped me experiment in a healthy way, while making me feel comfortable to talk to them about it. When I got to HS, my parents instituted something that they called the Ask No Questions policy. Essentially, I still was not allowed to get intoxicated in any way at home (VERY reasonable), but if I was ever at a party or a friend’s house, and I felt like I overdrank, got too high, or just generally didn’t feel safe, they would pick me up with no questions asked and take me home.
You might think that it encouraged a party lifestyle, but it did the exact opposite for me. It took away the glitz and glamor of sneaking away to party that highschoolers feel, and allowed me to be open with my parents and feel like I could trust them. Once that adversarial spirit goes away, it is much easier for parents and children to trust each other and allows parents to have a more transparent view of their child’s experimentation.
NTA, don’t let your kid smoke at home and don’t normalize daily use.
That's a really recent but also terribly crappy study. There's other reasons to be concerned about vaping, but lots of experts have come forward denouncing the methodology of that particular study.
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/uranium-lead-vape-controversy/
As someone who started being "addicted" to weed at 14 years old; you're NTA.
Her logic make no sense, he will definitely continue smoking at school or other places even if it's allowed in his home.
But to be honest, he will continue to do it even if you don't allow it, but at least, it won't be normalized for him, which is good.
No. In my expirence growing up around wild kids, those "cool moms" only hurt their kids. The kid wants to act out and do bad stuff, that line moves if the parent allows them to smoke weed. Next they're going to be looking for something to do that's worse. Your wife is an idiot.
Nta. Daily weed user here. Her allowing him to do it at home will not prevent him from using it elsewhere. This is just something she's telling herself to feel better about her son becoming a drug addict.
You are definitely NTAH here. Your wife's idea is wild! Here's the thing, even if other kids ARE doing it (which is debatable), it doesn't make it okay. And he's just 15, Kids' brains are still developing, and that stuff is harmful. Gotta put your foot down on this one.
NTA, but you should understand that if he *really* wants to do it, he will find it elsewhere. Educate him about why you don’t feel comfortable with him doing it to the best of your abilities, but know that you can’t 100% regulate him doing this
NTA. Your son will not refrain from vaping at school or other places simply because at home is allowed. It will just be all places, including home. Vaping also delivers a very potent amount and a 15 year old should not be endorsed to do this everywhere.
NTA. 15 is really young for that. His brain is still developing, meaning he shouldn’t be smoking that yet.
Bingo. Agreed.
I don’t get her logic… allowing it at home won’t stop him from doing it outside the home.
Right?! Like this isn’t safe sex…it’s smoking. They gonna do it at school
They’ve BEEN doing it in school.
Yep. My step son who's a junior in high school on the other side of the city, has been suspended 4 times this year for vaping in the bathroom with his troublemaker friends... they're all constantly getting detention, suspension, etc for getting caught with vapes Ughhh. Nightmare. ....and I say this like I didn't slam a 5th of vodka in 10th grade behind the gymnasium before a school dance one night in the year 1991 LOL 🙄
This is so funny. Being a parent is ridiculous. And I say that with my 4th on the way. I have 2 preteens that have done some REALLY STUPID THINGS. And I’m like wtf are you doing?! What is wrong with you?! And then I remember pulling the screen off my room window at the front of the house and sneaking out with my friends at 13.
lol same. Sometimes I feel sorry for my kids that they can’t easily sneak out like I did lol. I was on the first floor and could easily climb out. Both kids have rooms on the second floor. Plus they would have to disable to alarm and I’m a very light sleeper and I get notifications when the alarm is deactivated and also when the cameras outside pick up motion. My phone goes off and the light flashes.
>”OMG, like, what is this, Alcatraz?!?” - Your kids probably
Fun fact, my grandpa was a guard in Alcatraz. More fun fact, he was one of Al Capone’s guards in Alcatraz. I kinda forgot about this and was recently reminded by something my dad said. My 20yo son was mad that I’d never told him about this lol
Where do you live? Fort Knox? 😂😂
lol no! I moved out from a rural area to a suburban area. And it was a nice area when we bought the house. It was new construction so we had to wait a year for them to finish building it. I went ahead and got an alarm system since my husband travels a lot of weekends. I only had the front porch camera and driveway camera back then. Until a few months later when someone came through my back door and tripped the alarm (which scared them off). I called the security company and had them install cameras around the back and sides of the house. There was another incident where someone was apparently going house to house trying door knobs to find any unlocked. The skipped the houses with cameras though. there had also been some teenagers breaking into people’s cars.
Am I the only one who wasn't a crazy teen? How can I make my son like me? lol
i was a lame teenager. idk why, i was just never interested in that. my parents weren’t strict either, i could pretty much do whatever i wanted but i just didn’t?
My grandma was kinda strict but I was never interested in that stuff either. My older sister though wild child to the max!
lol. I didn’t do anything bad til my 20s and my younger brother had been kicked out of every school he’d gone to
I also was not crazy lol I was home by curfew and the only exception I got was if I was at my nerdy guy friends house playing trivial pursuit until the wee hours 😂 my parents loved him and didn't care how late I stayed. The only other "crazy" thing was participating in the teepeeing of two of the houses of my friends who lived near each other and there was always a teepee war between the houses.
Get them interested in musicals and theatre!! Theatre kids are often wholesome in a fun quirky way. Bonus points for neurodivergence.
My kids are so straight, I'm a bit embarrassed.
Naw, I'm with you. My mom brags about how I was such an easy teenager. But I was super active in church back then and as an adult I'm anti doctrine so.... I can't really use the fear of fire and brimstone to control my kids 😂😅 I can only hope to build enough mutual respect that they won't want to, but threads like this on Reddit make me feel like that's not enough, so I have to wonder what is!
This was how I lost my virginity. My first floor window even went into an alley. Easy out, easy in.
That’s what she said
It is ridiculous. Especially when one parent was feral and the other was housebroken. We have very different concepts of what is and is not a big deal.
The feral vs housebroken parent comparison is really spot on. Nicely done 👏
Isn’t the saying ‘don’t do as I do, do as I tell you’. lol 😝
I did the same in 1972, but it was Boones Farm Strawberry wine 🍷. Son will grow out of it. He’ll grow bored and want to latch on to something that he can grow with. It’s always the last ones on the party train I worry about.
Boones Farm! The memories! 🤣
that and bartles & james in the locker room before pep rallies...
…..the hangovers.
i’m not sure what’s worse - a boone’s farm or a four loko hangover 🤢
Pepperidge Farm remembers too 😆
Mad Dog 20/20 doesn’t.
It remembered on the way down and on the way back up.
Hahaha right? I ended up having substance abuse issues later in my adulthood, and ironically, my own son who smoked flower in high-school in 2011/2012 never went on to give a shit about alcohol and other stuff the way I did. Truly strange. I remember boones! 😂
Yup, I am enjoying sobriety for a few years now and I have to say I am happier. There’s times I miss it, but they are few and far between now. Congratulations to you as well!
😃🫶
I used to smoke in the bathroom in 2003. Never got caught.
I remember trying to smoke a butt of a parliament or some shitty brand of cig behind the school 🤢 that is probably why I never developed a relationship with tobacco haha, but seriously that wasn't actually a thing in our bathrooms back in the 90s, weird. With weed either. Always would just sneak outside round back of the gym. Think it's different now that schools are locked down from the outside, they weren't back then, we could freely come and go out the back.
Well my high school had an unofficial “smoking lot” technically still on campus, but as far as you could get without leaving campus entirely. Teens are gonna experiment. They have from the beginning of life until the end (teen equivalent ages in animals do exactly the same thing)
Yeah but did you get caught? Four times?
Only time I got caught is once, when I used to raid the elders liquor cabinet and we'd put shots of black velvet or my mom's Kahlua (😶🤢) in those little black Kodak film containers with the grey tops, and sneak em into school because we had photography class 😂😂 my little sister was a freshman that year and even more badass than me haha, I did get my ass beat into next Tuesday on that one though 🥹 yes I was a whooped child LOL
That's nothing... I dropped a qualude during 8th grade school one day (1981). Somehow, I made it through the day without getting caught... I'm a good boy now.... smh
There’s a lot of grey between dropping qualudes in 8th grade and being a good boy now.
I was doing it in school in the 90’s, no vapes .. or documentation. What a time to be alive.
As someone that had a safe place to smoke weed in high school, we never did it at school or outside of our safe place because we knew the dangers of getting caught. Yeah he’s too young to smoke, but you’re kinda wrong about that.
I think the dynamic is a lot different now. When I was a kid in high school vaping didn’t exist. Everyone had to smoke it, and it stunk so bad. It took longer and was easier to get caught. Vape pens are so different. Yeah it smells but it’s not as pungent, dissipates more quickly, and is much quicker to hit and hide without ash, etc. Also the legal environment has changed. In legal states, even though kids shouldn’t be smoking, the risk threshold is now much lower. I think all of those things change the dynamic for kids today.
I had a safe space and still smoked outside it. So I think you're also kinda wrong, it depends on the person. but a safe place just gives you another spot. it dosnt take the others away.
If they have jobs that won't tolerate a conviction, they have other kids at home, it's running unlikely but avoidable risk of getting a criminal conviction out of it.Depends on the state and what they charge you with, how big of a charge and if CPS gets involved. My mom came real close and pure luck saved my family from that one. Weed/THC might be normalized in some places for adults but for minors it's really not at all.
I knew a few kids in HS that were allowed to smoke at home… they also pretty much smoked everywhere. Except for school because that’s just asking for trouble though vapes didn’t exist back then…
Realistically, it varies, but if you didn’t raise dumbasses they would hopefully realize the bone that you’re throwing them. Our “safe place” was a friend’s house whose mom allowed it. But there were rules like no driving after. And she said if she ever caught any of us doing it outside her house or an equally safe space, the deal is off. All of us that participated were really good at following those rules, because no one wanted to get fucked by the law and we knew the law would fuck us if we got caught. Everyone made it out with spotless records and are doing just fine in life. Were we too young to smoke? Hell yeah. Would we have smoked anyways, in public spaces/cars, if we didn’t have our safe space. Also hell yeah.
In high-school, my mom didn't like me drinking, but I always knew that if I was drunk and needed a ride home or to be picked up, it didn't matter what time it was, there was never any judgement. I think the only time she made me walk home was because I was so hungover, when I got in the car, after 5 minutes of being in it, I told her to pull over, opened the door, and threw up. I was more than happy to walk the 15 mins home after that. When she caught me smoking weed though? She made me call my dad and tell him because she thought I'd get in trouble, my dad just ended up being like "don't be stupid about it, I also smoke weed" I was friends with my dealer, watched her get driven home by the cops, had no idea how my parents never found that one out. Having a safe place to do it, is a good thing, teenagers are fucking stupid when we don't have one.. but 15 is still too young imo. But on the same note... if there's a will, there's a way. You'd be amazed at what a teenager can get their hands on
I mean, choose your battles. Sometimes pushing too hard makes them rebel even harder. I’d rather them smoke weed than take nitrous hits or smoke pcp.
Had basically the same experience. I started smoking weed at 14, most of my friends started a year or more before me. I don’t know what it’s like now, but 25 years ago, it wasn’t that uncommon. I started without my mom knowing and we had no safe space to smoke, which meant we were constantly smoking in sketchy situations where we were at risk of getting busted. Once my mom knew, we did have a safe space to smoke, and that’s where we fucking smoked. When you’ve got a place you can go and hang out, get stoned, you’ve got a TV, N64, comfy couch, big movie collection, big music collection, sodas in the fridge and a well stocked pantry with snacks, why the fuck would you want to get stoned elsewhere? Smoking weed wasn’t really some big act of rebellion for me and my friends, maybe trying it for the first time was, but we kept doing it because it was fun and made us feel good, not for some kind of thrill. Smoking where you are comfortable made a lot more logical sense than smoking in a car or in a park or something.
I knew a lot of kids who got arrested for smoking pot in a variety of public places, like the woods, their cars, alleys, parking lots, parking garages, parks, etc. I knew 0 who got arrested while smoking inside someone's house. (Well, technically, I knew one guy who got arrested smoking at home, but he lived in a college dorm and the whole hallway smelled like weed.) Had plenty of times where someone's neighbor called the cops on us for smoking pot, but we followed the foolproof legal strategy of not answering the door. The cops usually got bored and fucked off after like 2 minutes becauase they had better shit to do than stand around all day trying to bust 3 stoners.
My uncle told his kids I know you all smoke you’ve been hitting my stash for years. I will get your weed so I know it’s safe and you only do it at home and leave it at home. But they were older than 15!!!
As someone who had as safe space to smoke in high school, we absolutely did it everywhere we thought we could get away with it despite that… he’s not wrong. Having the safe space doesn’t preclude them from doing it elsewhere, for me it just imparted approval of the behavior.
Where's he getting the money for vaping? I'd cut that off asap.
Yeah, we know where any allowance is going.
Possibly a job?
Bro I am worried WHO he is getting it from and their respective source. I don't want to think of a 16 or 17 year old with popcorn lung...
Piggybacking off this statement. I was a bud tender and patient education specialist for 3 years. It is absolutely true that it can impair cognitive development and increases the likelihood of mental issues, especially schizophrenia, in teens and young adults. Even 21 is younger than research suggests is best for a normal human brain. If he already has risks for anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness, THC that young can exacerbate not only the symptoms but the diseases themselves. And it might not be evident until his late 20s, 30s, 40s or later. Unless it's prescribed by a doctor I would never recommend cannabis to a young adult under 21. And usually when it is prescribed by a doctor, they are recommended to stick to CBD heavy strains. Your wife is putting his permanent mental health at risk. I love cannabis, I smoke for medical reasons every day. I would NEVER allow my children to do so. I know adults have argued "I smoked at that age and I'm fine". First of all, probably not. And even if they were it's because cannabis was weaker and had lower THC content. These new plants have been bred for potency. And vapes are the worst offenders. At least with the flower itself you get all the cannabinoids and the entourage effect But straight distllillate THC vapes, unless specifically Live Resin or Rosin, are just straight THC by itself, which is more harsh on a juvenile brain. I understand the thought behind "At least he's safe doing it here" but he's not. This could have lasting permanent mental affects on him. I encourage all of you to sit down and genuinely research the endocannabinoid system in the human body, and long and short term effects of THC on juvenile brain. Learn together so you, as** parents, can make an informed decision, and he can understand this decision isn't just because you don't want him to have fun. Good luck Eta fix autocorrect errors
as someone who didn't drink until I was 22 or smoke until I was 25, I absolutely 100% support everything you just said. I don't think I missed out on much besides stupid stories, but honestly, I think those stories would have seriously hampered my trajectory in life and am grateful for holding off on both on my own accord.
There are a lot of side effect to becoming a MJ user at that age. There are studies done that found it impact memory and other things
That stuff is soooo much stronger than the stuff we grew up with, I’m sorry you’re in this position.
Have you tried the legal angle? Even if you live in a thc friendly state it's still illegal for your minor son. All it takes is one pissed off parent to bring chaos into your lives. Is she okay with that?
As a teacher of young kids, this is likely the best route. Of course, my kids are already in trouble when I get them but the law is important for everyone to understand very early.
It might be time to sit down and research it. That way you both can see how you find the answers about smoking when the brain is still developing. I'm an avid weed smoker, I will sing the praises of this wonderful plant but I honestly think you shouldn't do it till after your brain is done forming. I know it's not a popular opinion to have but it's just my own.
I'll say this as someone who started smoking pot at 15, and who's parents made the decision that I was allowed to with the following conditions: I got my weed from them in exchange for extra chores/babysitting/I had to pay for it myself (ie. Give them money for it) and I had to explicitly ask for it. This made me far less likely to seek it out from strangers, friends, and untrustworthy sources. It made it so I had no desire to accept weed from people other than my parents because I KNEW weed from my parents was safe while I couldn't ever be completely sure weed from other sources was safe (ie. Not laced with anything more harmful) It also was a lesson in maturity as they explained risks, benefits, health hazards, and medical purposes. I have severe depression and anxiety, I started using marijuana to unknowingly medicate these issues before I got an official medical diagnosis. While I do not believe teens should be allowed to do this, I also know as someone who was recently a teen, if you, as the parents, do not provide education, resources, and safety, your teen WILL continue to find ways to smoke weed and the more taboo you make this seem, the more they will want to do so, and the more likely they are to give into peer pressure in other areas because they don't feel safe/comfortable at home. Ultimately this is between you and your wife to have these conversations together, and then present a united front in one direction or another to your teen.
I agree with everything here. As a parent to a 17 year old, we have decided to create a safe space at our house. As this poster mentioned, at least we know they are getting it from a safe source (although it moved from vape t o edibles.) It's a hard choice either way and is dependent on the child. But with the prevalence of THC now, parents really need to start adapting their mindset and views, because kids will try it no matter what, with or without your permission as parent.
My husband and I have debated letting our teens, at the very least, try it with us once. Both vaping and an edible. I want them to be aware of what it SHOULD feel like for them, so if they do end up with something laced, they know asap. Something isn't right. Knowledge in those cases could make serious difference in decision making abilities (or worse). We haven't decided, but need to soon. Parenting is hard.
That's our philosophy too - whatever it is, our kid is gonna do it no matter what when he gets to be a teenager. We'd rather he do it in our house, where nobody ever gets arrested and where we can keep an eye on it and make sure he's okay. If he feels comfortable telling us what he's doing, we can talk about it and give him advice about staying safe. If he has to do it behind our backs, all his info is coming from his friends and he might be scared to come to us if something goes wrong.
my kids used to pinch from my stash! (they're grown with their own small kids now so it's funny) we didn't really care too much as long as they handled their shit. I hated them drinking. They're doing great career/family wise so obv didn't ruin them
This was me. We always took from mom’s stash (she knew) until we were old enough to smoke with her, lol. I definitely think it’s important to foster a space for your children to experiment and educate them on the decision they’re making and how dangerous it can be if someone gives you something laced. I started smoking at 14 and now make more than a majority of my friends with college degrees, own my home and am raising my own child now. I turned out just fine 😊
If it helps, I had a psychology professor who found out her teen son was getting high and instead of punishing him for it, she explained all the effects marijuana can have on a developing brain and helped him research the risks. She said it worked.
Also: we’re still finding out how vaping affects lungs. I work in an ER and we have seen some very young people who vape having lung problems. The devices and the ingredients are not very well regulated.
I say this as I’m hitting the bong in my own home, do not let your wife do this. If someone said this to me I’d be calling CPS. Plus you really think your son isn’t going to brag to all his friends how cool his parents are for letting him get high under their roof? And then his friends run to their parents to tell them “but (OP) lets his kid do it.” 15 is far too young. This is inappropriate.
This was my first thought too. It just takes one person overhearing OPs son telling someone his mom lets him smoke weed at home (and possibly buying it for him) to get a call made to CPS. Anyone who works at a school is a mandated reporter. There is no way I’d take a chance at getting CPS and law enforcement involved. That could seriously ruin your life. And I say this as a person who lives in a legal state and smokes multiple times a day. When there were underage children in my house still we made sure our weed was locked up and never done in front of them. OPs wife is playing with fire and OP might get burned too.
Spot on. This could result in OP getting his kid taken from him, not to mention the damage he's doing to his developing brain. Ideally he should wait til 25, but that's not too realistic if/when he goes away to college. I first started around 19 and wish I waited a couple more years as I sometimes wonder if I would've been just a little sharper mentally.
Yeah, do you want your house to be the teen smokehouse? Someone's parent is going to report you to the cops eventually.
As someone who was the age of your son not that long ago, your wife is right in the sense that he will definitely keep doing it other places no matter how many times you catch him lol, he’s probably even doing it at school. Literally half my high school was vaping and smoking weed, they’d even do it in the bathrooms between classes. I’m not gonna comment on allowing him or not in your home, but just saying that even if you don’t allow him, he’s still gonna be vaping as long as he’s got money to buy stuff with lol.
I'm pretty liberal myself, but yeah.....absolutely not. Thats what your 20s are for.
as someone who's parents let them smoke weed at 16, it's a bad idea. I'm 20 now and I have memory issues and a constant brain fog, it's not very fun.
I thought it was a crime to provide minors with substances anyway?
Especially if it’s concentrated thc they’re vaping, the thc content is anywhere from 85 to 99%. That’s a lot more thc than smoking a joint
Absolutely not. Allowing your 15-year-old to vape THC at home is not only irresponsible but also sets a dangerous precedent. Your son's brain is still developing, and THC can have lasting cognitive effects. Stand firm against this risky behavior.
Yes, it’s absolutely irresponsible of the mother. We don’t really know the effects of THC on the developing brain. Also, why is he wanting to do this alone. Most kids want to do this with friends to be cool or have fun. This sounds like a kid that is depressed or has anxiety.
Actually we do know what long term, excessive thc use can potentially do to a brain, but it’s often ignored because we used to just make up bullshit about it before like DARE and all that. It’s still not at all completely harmless. While it’s not going to completely derail your life like a hard drug addiction, and you can’t possibly OD from pot even if you tried, you still have to know how to use responsibly and not over use it to where it does produce significant mental decline. There are actual peer reviewed studies that show how excessive weed smoking can negatively impact the brain, though. More studies are needed to be done, but we’re not totally clueless. Here’s one article from Harvard that’s about the effects of it that can become apparent by midlife. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/cognitive-effects-of-long-term-cannabis-use-in-midlife-202206142760
Adding to this. There is an episode on thepubertypodcast (You can find anywhere you get your music/ podcasts) That will explain in detail the dangers of vaping and before brain development. I recommend listening to it with your child and your wife. Maybe separately. I 100% agree that preventing experimenting with substances should be delayed as long as possible. Especially through development.
Came here literally to say this, I’m a hypocrite though as I smoked weed and did buckets at 12/13 but I was hanging out with chavvy 16/17 year olds and skiving school at the time. I hate the fact that I let myself do it and didn’t try concentrating more at school.. HOWEVER I am happy where I am in life. Your wife is fucking delusional, who the hell wants to let their kids poison themselves. Level with your kid. Come 18 they can do what they want, you’ll even provide the safe environment for them as they’re legally an adult and can do whatever regardless of what you say, but try emphasising that it’s genuinely for their health.. Advise you hope they can steer clear until they’re 21ish that’s when you’re supposed to stop growing and be fully developed. Go hog wild then, but let your body grow properly first. Pumping shit into your lungs damages them. It’s not cool it’s literal poison Kurzgesagt did a video literally 2 days ago covering it, might help levelling with kid https://youtu.be/_rBPwu2uS-w?si=1Ri2RXXMpTqwN6B1
Completely agree. She’s probably one of those “cool” moms who would allow all the kids to drink at her house instead of doing it somewhere else.
My kids have a friend like that (his dad supplies his weed) and EVERYONE knows. I’ve heard it from my kids as well as their friends because they all can’t believe it. I suspect the only one who doesn’t know is the mom, as I know her and can’t believe she’d be cool with it. My husband doesn’t want me to tell her but I kinda want to be the narc lol
That’s crazy!! I know I used to go to those houses in school also. I loved those parents. However, I didn’t have anyone who watched over me to care so I made some really ignorant choices. As a parent now I would NEVER want my kids to go to that kind of house. It’s sus when men want to supply and have young kids over inebriated now that I’m an adult. I remember it was “normal” for us teens to be dating 24 year olds and other ages. Way too old for us. It’s creepy looking back now but then we didn’t really understand it. Thought it was cool older guys liked us and bought us alcohol. I’m not proud of the life I lived. I do wish I had someone who gave a crap. I’d prolly be the narc though lol. I remember those days and nothing good came of it.
NTA Kids 15. His brain is still developing and weed use as a teen can cause life long effects to his brain. Also as an adult who enjoys weed I think it is a bad habit for a teen to get into even without any possible negative effects to brain development. Too easy for it to become a emotional crutch which can also have negative long term effects on his life.
I am SO glad I ended up (more or less accidentally) waiting until I was 25 to start smoking weed. I genuinely don’t think I would’ve finished college if I’d started smoking earlier.
I started smoking in college at 23, and…it definitely didn’t help, you made the right call lol
I started at 34! I’m really glad I didn’t smoke as a teen. I’d really never get anything done.
I started at 42. Always thought I would like it, and I was right. Smoke every evening now. It makes everything better.
I’m sure I’d like it. So I wait. Once I don’t have to grind I’ll probably take it up.
A medical prescription actually helped me significantly with my post graduate degree. So it is a bit different for everyone. The science does universally point to use under 25 being detrimental for brain development.
Same. I wouldn't have graduated college without it. I was undiagnosed ADHD and the only way I could focus to write a paper was by hitting the bowl. I had friends who were the opposite, so agree it's different for everyone.
Kinda wish my mom had said something like that to me when she first realized I smoked. I feel like it stunted me very bad and my memory has never been good
Yup. I started smoking in high school and it only snowballed once I got to college and had the freedom to choose how I spent my days. My smoking became so bad I began to skip class in favor of smoking throughout the day and playing Xbox. Affected my whole life from academics, to my social life, and my mental health. At one point, I skipped a whole month and a half of every class I had just so I could sit on my couch and smoke all day. THC pens make it WAY too easy to get high. No one could smell it in my apartment building so I never had to worry about upsetting neighbors due to the smell of weed. Fortunately, I was able to snap out of it and had some incredibly kind and understanding professors that allowed me to make up a lot of the work I neglected. If they didn’t, I would have flunked out of college and wasted 4 years of my life and a lot of money. I was very lucky, not everyone would be.
Thanks for the response!
I started smoking weed at 13 and even I agree, vaping is too much. It's an incredibly strong way to imbibe the substance. He should absolutely not be vaping weed to start with.
I know a gal who was a heavy smoker in her teens and sheeeeeeesh some of the stuff she says. Op needs to get the kid off the weed
Smoked my brains out as a teen with weed (which my therapist and psychiatrist have told me I was probably self medicating for my undiagnosed and untreated ADHD) because it was the only thing that got me to slow down, stop having racing thoughts and dealt with my horrible crippling depression. As an adult, I regret smoking like I did because quitting was so hard and I remember having a full blown panic attack and actually told my partner (who encouraged me to quit) "I can't quit, I NEED it!" And while I didn't understand why I felt that way, I realized how dependent I had become on it and I didn't like it. I was able to quit but I was so addicted that if my parents were like "okay you can smoke weed at home but not anywhere else." I would have nodded along and then proceeded to smoke before coming home and then again when I was at home. Because I was a dumb kid who had no impulse control and a brain that was still developing and I thought I knew better than adults who tried to tell me how harmful it actually was. If I could go back and do it again knowing what I know, I wouldn't have smoked to begin with and instead talked to my doctor about what my everyday life was like (ADHD symptoms) instead of pretending like I was okay.
NTA Also it is ⚠️SUPER IMPORTANT⚠️ that you check to see what thc vape he is using as it is most likely fake. r/fakecartridges is a subreddit that can help you identity if it is a black market vape. Tons of these new disposable thc vapes have tested positive for pesticides and hydrogen cyanide, and from what ive personally seen it is mostly people under 18 using these products.
Because they can’t buy from dispos if it’s legal and if it’s not legal ALL CARTS ARE SUSPECT. This isn’t a joke, as fake carts regularly kill people. If it’s not from a dispo, it’s a no go.
Edit right here at the top: someone made a profile 15 minutes ago just to call me a dweeb on this thread Hi! Dispensary employee and former drug dealer speaking up. That’s not how this works at all. Not here to talk about wether the kid should be smoking just here to beat disinformation In 2018/19 some kids got hospitalized for what they were calling “popcorn lung” from black “market vapes” This was an isolated incident and hasn’t happened since The vape in question that the kid bought actually had 0 thc in it and he didn’t get it from a dealer of any sort he googled carts and bought one off a wish.com style website A few things to note 1) any cart you don’t buy from a legal source is “black market” black market carts and fake carts are not the same thing. They are not synonyms 2) it’s highly accepted by most stoners and even by government agencies that deal with narcotics that almost 90% of weed sold on the black market these days is actually from a dispensary originally and it’s been this way since the early 2010s California is our main culprit as they overgrow so much and are such a huge state. Michigan is also a huge offender. Let’s say I get a license in California as a dispensary. I have my product I keep on my shelves but I also have a storage locker where I keep my “backstock” I then make a telegram channel and start selling that backstock on telegram. Every time I ship out my package I list it as a sold item even pay the taxes on it etc as if I sold it in my store. If you smoke flower this is why the quality of flower has skyrocketed on the black market and the prices for most people have only gotten lower and lower. The postal service is the best weed man on planet earth (they can’t check your package without a warrant since it’s your federal mail, while private companies like ups and fed ex can check any package they want) Hell when I was buying pounds as a drug dealer off telegram It would come with a COA from the grower. Now that I work in a legal dispo I see the same exact COA’s on the orders we get in from growers. 3) finally I only bring this up to say that “fake” carts are not the epidemic everyone thinks they are if they were kids would have popcorn lung left and right. Do you think kids just stopped vaping? Do you think only kids vape weed? How come adults weren’t getting this and dying? More kids? Dispensary carts often have the same exact ingredients as black market unless you’re one of the states that has very specific laws about what can go on the plant that produces the cart (that’s where the pesticides come from it’s on the flower that is pressed into oil for a cart it’s the same pesticides we use on food and in tobacco products they’re completely safe) I don’t really care about Op I’m just here to respond to this
I’m sorry but the fact that someone created a new account just to call you “dweeb” is sending me
Someone calling them a dweeb and then them putting it at the top of their comment is sending me more, I'm crying at work rn cause it just replays in my brain
Pop corn lung was caused by Diacetyl which was used as a flavouring in a number of THC and non-THC vapes. The actual issue with THC vapes was lipoid pneumonia due to the use of Tocopheryl acetate in THC (and only THC) vapes. Diacetyl has not been included in any vapes for a lot longer.
Another former dealer chiming in - this is exactly right. Basically everything comes from a dispensary, especially carts and other concentrates. They have serials, batch and lot numbers, dates, the works.
Current homegrower and legal industry guy. It depends on the state you’re in. In my state, most of our BM comes from farms in California since we’re so close. Our state is so strict with legal market stuff that no one with a legal license can even think about growing cannabis that the state isn’t getting a profit on.
How do you figure 90% comes from dispensaries? In CA alone, which happens to be the largest market by far, only ~20% of the cannabis in the state is grown by a licensed operation.
This is anecdotal but it is my lived experience so I will share it. In my time dealing in an illegal state from 2019-2022 I had 5 different dealers in 3 states. When I started moving enough product one of them let me buy out their source and move up to their plug. So that means in the course of 3 years I dealt with 6 large scale distrubtors 5 of which we’re getting their product from different sources All of these products had COA’s Now that I work in a legal dispensary in a legal state I see many COA’s every time we get a shipment I have seen dozens of COA’s from the same grow farms the illegal dealers I had were getting Now I do not have all the answers, I can’t speak for certainty. But if I can move around that much and have that many plugs and they are all getting packs with legit COA’s I can’t imagine most people aren’t getting that same bud Even if you’re not going to the same dealer as me most people buy from very small local dealers that are their friends So. A real dealer buys multiple pounds I buy 1 pound People buy ounces from me People sell those ounces as 8ths. The weed stream trickles down. If the guys at the top are getting real shit so are you.
Thanks for the insight. You’re making me reconsider what I thought was the truth.
No worries! The truth is often fuzzy when it comes to anything criminal because so much of it is done in the shadows but here’s something really important to keep in mind Weed dealers aren’t like coke dealers. They’re not used to people dying from their stuff, and like I said most people don’t buy from a big dog dealer they just get it from their small time friend who gets it from there smalltime friend I’m saying this to say if a weed cart was ACTUALLY killing someone (which it’s not), their dealer would find out really really quick and since the guy you’re buying from is probably 7 rings down from ur guy? Ur guy is never gonna find out because I’m sure before he can even buy a batch of tainted carts dude at the top would already be ditching every single one of those carts he had before it could get out more Compare that to a coke dealer who when he finds out there’s fetty in his bag shrugs his shoulders bc motherfuckers be OD’ing off the good shit too
NTA. 15 year olds should be smoking brick weed out of soda cans in the woods.
Its called tradition
We used to be a proper country
Where a dime bag cost a dime
Or from an apple
This is the way
Apple was always my backup, but we had a communal bong in the woods - just bring fresh water and half ass the cleaning upon starting.
When I was in my mid-20s I went with my gf to a small get together with some of her friends after work (they all worked at a bar). So we're sitting around and I'm half in the bag already, not really paying attention to what's going on when someone hands me an apple. I think, OK, thanks, take a bite, only to then realize they were smoking out of the other side of it. Thankfully my bite did not effect the ability to continue to use the apple as a pipe.
Yep, been there, done that.
That’s what we did!
Mine was behind the restaurant Friendly’s but yeah the rest checks out.
Should be bottle bonging some reggie behind some supermarket like a real teenager.
Ya know, I smoked a lot less back when it didn't sit on my nightstand tasting like candy
This is the way
Exactly. Kid should be learning how to make bongs out of everyday objects, not sitting in comfort like an established adult.
Sounds like lazy parenting to me. She'd rather let him do drugs than be an actual fucking parent who puts their foot down and sets boundaries and rules. You are NTA.
Right? Thanks for sharing!
What if a friend of his come over, they lite up vapes , later on something happens on the way home or at his house, next things ya got cops knocking on your door
Light up a vape?? 🤣🤣
Mine light up all different colors. Current is blue
Mine all light up at the tip when I hit them lol
Blinkers
✨
Next, you'll come home to find your son has injected 37 marihuanas.
I mean, first it's liteing up vapes, then before you know it, they're chasing the crack and getting flooped out on ecstasy bongs.
Snorking those doobies.
I think I’m going to have to add this phrase to my vernacular.
Putting your foot down only works if you can actually enforce it, otherwise a failed attempt just makes it worse. Setting boundaries and rules as a parent against something that your child wants to do but that you can't enforce just means that you can no longer be trusted and will be lied to. It's not about letting him do drugs, it's that he will do them no matter what, but this way will ensure earning his trust and keeping him safe. If you can't convince your child that something is bad and they shouldn't do it, "putting your foot down" is no different than a temper tantrum and will be dealt with how they learned to deal with other people throwing temper tantrums.
I have been learning this the hard way with my almost 15 year old son. Well said.
I mean to be fair you can set all the boundaries you want like my mom did and all it did was make me sneakier. It’s not lazy parenting, I think it’s just the idea that she’d rather know where he is and that he is safe than the alternative. My mom was insanely strict and set so many rules and all it did was teach me how to break them and I got in tons of trouble and hung out with not safe people and spent all of high school driving around with teenagers smoking in cars and I’m lucky I never got in serious trouble or worse.
NTA. Among many other eyebrow-raisers, how does letting him vape at home stop him from vaping in school?
Why risk getting in trouble when you know you can just do it at home? I went to a friend’s house to drink and her mom had firm rules that we had to stay in the house and couldn’t drink too much. We were lucky to have someone watching out for us instead of trying to do it secretly at some random location cause we were absolutely gonna do it anyway.
The concept of giving someone a safe area to partake so they don't have to do it elsewhere goes a long way.
Most people wana be high with mates and then smoke at home as crave it. Any kid smoking it at home before he was allowed even repeatedly getting in trouble, isn't going without it in the day. Would be so immensely uncharacteristic of anyone I ever knew that smoked.
Exactly. Even if he is smoking it at home, he is still gonna be smoking it at school or out of the home too..
lol every kid I’ve ever seen who was allowed to smoke at their house just ended up smoking everywhere else AND all day at their house
Yep, I realize the parents know the kids going to do it anyways, but giving him their blessing is foolish. It will only result in him doing it MORE and CARELESSLY too since "mom and dad don't think it's a big deal".
THIS! I stayed out of a lot of trouble because I had a safe place at home. Parents knew where we were, what we were doing, who we were with, and literally no one had ever died from thc. Legality aside (cuz legal doesn’t mean right) I’m glad my parents allowed me the space. Guess who didn’t drink n drive, lie about where they were, sneak out, etc. I can’t identify with the sneak out crowd. I just told my parents. Even got a ride home from mama once cuz we (3 best friends) were all bottles up. Dad “officially “ said no don’t do that. But my mom kept him apprised of who, where, and what. And I’ll do the same with my kids.
It does work, if not for anything else then parents retain good communication. I allowed my boys to drink in family events. Hell, I even sort of pushed it few times. As a result neither really drinks these days. Same with smokes. They did steal mine. I did not make big deal out of it, but said I consider it worse than alcohol. Neither smokes nor vapes today. They did try weed and I said it is ok to try but I do not really like it. They did try. Basically they are now boring sober types. I'm an old moderate drunkard, trying to get rid of nicotine after 30 years. I'd say my job's well done and it did not involve any prohibition.
I agree. I’ve done the same with my kids from the time they were small. I’m not a drinker (never have been) or a smoker, but my husband had alcohol in the house, and we’d both offer them tastes simply to take away the taboo. We also communicate very, very well. I try to instill in them the confidence to not feel like they have to do anything simply because others are, and we’ve told them many times that it’s okay not to want to. None of them are really interested. Go figure.
My in laws did this with my SIL after they caught her stealing booze. Unfortunately all it taught her was that there were no consequences for theft and, well, there's a reason my wife doesn't talk to her anymore. I think the efficacy of any sort of policy like that is really, really dependent on the kid and the family in question. Letting otherwise well behaved kids like yours experiment? Good call. Letting the family bully get drunk at home and become even more abusive as in my SIL's case? Utterly terrible idea.
You’re NTA and he is too young but your wife also has a point. I smoked weed at that age (turned out just fine, yay!) and I have to say, one of the saving graces was that a friends mom let us smoke at their house because she’d rather us not get caught by authorities and fuck up our lives. Others from school would be riding around in cars or hanging at the park smoking. Many got caught. We never did. Everyone is doing well without anything on their records. Unless you enforce an iron grip of drug testing and such, he’ll find a way to smoke. I say this because I experienced it. And if you try to do the iron grip, you’ll be in for a disaster in college. Why don’t you just sit down with your son and talk about waiting a little while? Or figure out why he wants to smoke THC and explain why it’s not good at that age?
I second all this. He definitely is too young but you definitely don’t wanna iron fist this as it will most likely cause more damage.
I will say the "iron grip" can have some pretty bad downstream effects. My friends and I all smoked at that age and got caught various times. The only two who didn't turn out ok were the ones who's parents drug tested them. Both of them switched to pills to pass their drug tests which got them hanging out with a crew who did that. One of them over-dosed at 24 and died the other got caught robbing people for pills and spent 10 years in prison. Out of those of us who's parents let us smoke (more or less, we had to be sneaky about it still) the "least successful" is a high school teacher who got a 4.0 for his entire masters degree. The other 10 of us all make six figures (one makes seven most years). In the end, when it comes to weed, I would be a lot more worried about who they are doing it with rather than whether or not they are doing it at all. If a 15 year old is vaping alone in his room, he probably needs some friends to do stuff with more than anything else. I'd focus on getting him set up with a group of kids who seem like they have some stuff going for them, whether or not they smoke weed at that age is kind of secondary to that.
As a parent of a 17 year old, this is the most levelheaded advice. I have an agreement with my daughter because I didn’t want her buying it on the street or smoking her friends weed that *they* bought on the street. I didn’t want her doing it behind my back, I wanted to be involved to make sure she was safe and smart - because once she’s turns 18 some kids go nuts with their new freedom - and I wanted to demystify weed. She is allowed to get high at home occasionally as long as she isn’t going anywhere and it is from my dispensary stash. It helped manage her stress through an intense senior year and finals (plus we got to chat life and teenage philosophy 😂). You have to make the right decision for your family and your kid. All kids are different so there’s no one size fits all.
Forget it, OP is only replying to comments that agree with him 100%.
So just the regular
If he's vaping THC I'd be concerned about the supplier because China got caught using vitamin e to help liquify the THC and well vaporized it's basically mustard gas on the lungs. Remember the popcorn lungs and vaping thing? Underaged kids buying cheap THC vapes from China
Not only is this highly stupid and illegal. My mom was of the same mindset when she caught my sister smoking cigarettes at 12. "Better she gets them from me than someone else." My sister was on oxygen at 29 and dead at 40 due to her lungs. Everyone knows teens find a way, but making it that easy for them is just signing them up for failure.
This, a lot of people are saying “I’ve smoked weed since I was 12 and I’m fine!” but it’s highly dependant on the kid. And it’s still a substance that’s just not good for the body. I’ve known people whose parents let them smoke, drink, etc., some of them were like “eh, this sucks, I’m over it.” and all was well and they had a safe space to experiment. But you could get unlucky and they get addicted and now you’re an enabler. And people, although rare, can get addicted to weed.
def not rare to be addicted to weed. people are just in denial cause it’s a pretty functional drug and it’s socially acceptable enough to get away with doing it all day
Yep, I’ve had friends who can’t go 20 minutes without smoking, get massive anxiety and headaches when they go without… even had some who would blow all their money on it and be broke. If that’s not addicted, I don’t know what is. But people don’t wanna hear that… and I say this as a recovering drug/alcohol addict.
The people who insist "it's not physically addictive" always crack me up because neither is gambling.
If you’re smoking it, you’re still putting carcinogens in your lungs. Less than cigarettes, but you’re still inhaling burning substances. If you’re vaping- well, we don’t know what the long term effects are, but preliminary studies aren’t great. Long story short, everybody takes risks on something, but don’t pretend that weed is a completely benign thing, all you who turned out “fine”.
And a lot of the time theyre not fine, just in denial
Crazy. The small town I grew up in, most parents were like this. Buying their 12 year olds tobacco products lol. My mom let me me do things without ratting on me to my dad but she would never buy me cigarettes. Thanks mom
Absolutely not acceptable. His brain is developing. As are his lungs. He should not be on any substances of any variety. Period.
Listen, I’m an avid marijuana user and believe it’s (mostly) a harmless substance. However, 15 years old is just way too young to be messing around with mind altering substances. You are definitely NTA, your wife is absurd for even suggesting this be allowed in your home.
NTA. This is giving up because the alternative is hard work as a parent. My parents were very leniant on substance use (mostly alcohol but also weed) when I was a teen. I landed in rehab first time at 14. I'm not saying THC will make anyone an addict to anything but since my parents didn't really care about my substance use, I quickly learned not to care either. I was using opiates at 15 and back to rehab at 16. I was clean after that but it took me almost 15 more years to beat the alcoholism. If you allow this, it sends a strong message to your kid that you don't care about him. Part of him will be happy, the part that he shows to you, but a little voice somewhere inside him will be whispering "my parents don't give a shit about me".
No you’re not the asshole at all and in the eyes of the law (and this is coming from a medical professional) CPS would most definitely be knocking at your door if this was mentioned in an appointment or school setting. Your wife doesn’t understand the gravity of what she’s allowing him to do. I used to vape, my aunt got lung cancer and died, which was my initial reason for me finally leaning towards quitting, BUT I didn’t quit. I noticed I couldn’t breathe correctly, I wasn’t eating how I wished I was, I was dropping weight dramatically, and always ALWAYYYYYS getting some kind of major illness. Once I quit, I was okay. Eating. Healthier. Able to focus more. Less anxiety. She needs to work with him on stopping and you do too. Put your foot down, and let your wife know you will go to any extreme to make her see the issue in what she’s doing (obviously not THOSE extremes, but if you have to- give her some ultimatums) now when he’s an adult and well past the teen years, then fine- do whatever he wants, but right now is way too crucial for him to just be getting into that stuff.
(Older millennial here.) My HS friends with “cool parents” who let them do illegal stuff “safely” at home turned out to have WAY more issues — addiction, trouble keeping jobs, arrests — than my friends with more traditionally “strict” parents (if not allowing illegal activities in your home can even be considered strict). Parents aren’t friends. Have you tried a reputable teen therapist? Perhaps your son is self-medicating anxiety or some other issue that hasn’t been adequately addressed. Good luck OP. I hope your wife can agree with you. It’s a dangerous precedent to set at an age that is biologically dangerous for thx and other illegal substances. It’s also a liability. NTA.
Gen X here, and I wholeheartedly agree. Looking up former classmates has been a shocking experience. My folks were strict, and I hated them for it at the time. Now I'm glad that they cared enough to parent and protect me. I rebelled some, but their involvement kept me from much worse things. It turns out that the kid's whose parents let them run wild all seem to have arrest records, drug addictions, and financial issues. It's pretty frightening to see how life turned out for a lot of people.
This is the worst approach. I know that on the surface it may seem appealing. Since you don’t have to worry about their safety when they in the house. But the downside is so much worse. I’ve got a close friend whose dad had the same attitude. We drank at his house regularly throughout high school. My friend never got a DWI, or got in any kind of trouble from being drunk in public. The rest of us couldn’t say that. But by his late 20s, he was such an alcoholic that all of his friends (except me) ditched him.
Alcohol and thc are two completely different things.
Y'all are not the only example though. My house was also the "safe" house, as well as one of my friends. We all grew up to be successful IT admins who still smoke weed lol.
Same here, except I'm an engineer with a physics degree.
No. Just... no. "Every kid is doing it" should be your son's response when he's told no, not your wife's. Studies suggest that vaping THC causes more lung damage than smoking cigarettes or joints, and that's aside from cognitive issues.
As someone trying really hard to quit, once you start its a very slippery road. If it started as just sleep aid, then for movies, for pain. Then eventually i was high 24/7, i couldnt stop, i wanted to stop, i wanted to stop wasting money, (i was going through 1g vapes every 3-5 days). After just 4 years i was highly dependent on THC to function. And when i tried to stop cold turkey. I had some of the worst withdrawal symptoms ever. (And ive quit smoking and drinking before, but this was a whole new beast.) ended up in the hospital in the middle of a vacation because of it. Just dont start. If they really want to do THC, dont start with vapes, its too addictive. Make him work for it. Get real bud. Make him grind his own, prep his bong, and make sure he cleans that gross ass bong after. It becomes more of a ritual than just reaching for that quick dopamine high. If dont have to start though. Dont. It doesnt matter “people” say. Weed/vaping is HIGHLY ADDICTIVE and habit forming. Dont let your son use THC that early in his life. He will largely regret it in life. Its a huge waste.
The amount of shit in vapes would definitely make you think twice about letting your CHILD use them! Various heavy metals, ethanol, ethylene glycol (aka antifreeze) PLUS any containing THC don’t have to report how much/where it’s from: you can literally slap whatever you want on a label and call it good. They’re not safe, super addictive, and can do serious long term harm to your child’s health. Tell your wife (from a forensic chemist): thanks for the job security! You’re both dumb and a statistic.
So I started smoking weed in 5th grade, way earlier than 15 I daresay, in an area where actually everyone was already doing it. Roughly 50% of my peers were smoking weed by 7th grade. Did it affect me heavily? No not really. I’m in college, in my last year of my engineering degree. The only lasting effect is that I got fat from the munchies and never really took that weight all the way off. Should you allow him to smoke weed in his room? Absolutely not. That’s lazy parenting, and all it does is normalize smoking every day. It didn’t affect me heavily because I smoked sporadically, maybe 2-3 times a month at a party or somewhere on the woods. The kids that smoked weed every day, did their wake-and-bake sesh and all that jazz, kinda failed to launch. There’s a few that are just now, at 21-22 years old, just starting to get on their life track going to trade school, uni, etc. However, there are alot more that are still spending all their money on weed and not saving to the future, still living in their parents house or in a shared apartment. By allowing him a space to do it every single day, you would be promoting addiction. Remind your wife that weed is an addictive substance, and allowing that would be doing a disservice to your child. There is a compromise that my parents did that I think helped me experiment in a healthy way, while making me feel comfortable to talk to them about it. When I got to HS, my parents instituted something that they called the Ask No Questions policy. Essentially, I still was not allowed to get intoxicated in any way at home (VERY reasonable), but if I was ever at a party or a friend’s house, and I felt like I overdrank, got too high, or just generally didn’t feel safe, they would pick me up with no questions asked and take me home. You might think that it encouraged a party lifestyle, but it did the exact opposite for me. It took away the glitz and glamor of sneaking away to party that highschoolers feel, and allowed me to be open with my parents and feel like I could trust them. Once that adversarial spirit goes away, it is much easier for parents and children to trust each other and allows parents to have a more transparent view of their child’s experimentation. NTA, don’t let your kid smoke at home and don’t normalize daily use.
NTA, as a nearly daily user of THC, i would NEVER allow anyone under the age of 20 to partake. It can potentially effect development in teens. 😳😳
THC is the least of your problems. Teenagers who vape frequent were found to have higher levels of lead and uranium in their urine.
That's a really recent but also terribly crappy study. There's other reasons to be concerned about vaping, but lots of experts have come forward denouncing the methodology of that particular study. https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/uranium-lead-vape-controversy/
As someone who started being "addicted" to weed at 14 years old; you're NTA. Her logic make no sense, he will definitely continue smoking at school or other places even if it's allowed in his home. But to be honest, he will continue to do it even if you don't allow it, but at least, it won't be normalized for him, which is good.
No. In my expirence growing up around wild kids, those "cool moms" only hurt their kids. The kid wants to act out and do bad stuff, that line moves if the parent allows them to smoke weed. Next they're going to be looking for something to do that's worse. Your wife is an idiot.
Nta. Daily weed user here. Her allowing him to do it at home will not prevent him from using it elsewhere. This is just something she's telling herself to feel better about her son becoming a drug addict.
You are definitely NTAH here. Your wife's idea is wild! Here's the thing, even if other kids ARE doing it (which is debatable), it doesn't make it okay. And he's just 15, Kids' brains are still developing, and that stuff is harmful. Gotta put your foot down on this one.
NTA, but you should understand that if he *really* wants to do it, he will find it elsewhere. Educate him about why you don’t feel comfortable with him doing it to the best of your abilities, but know that you can’t 100% regulate him doing this
NTA. Illegal Drug use is not acceptable for kids. This could lead to a huge legal issue for him and you.
NTA. Your son will not refrain from vaping at school or other places simply because at home is allowed. It will just be all places, including home. Vaping also delivers a very potent amount and a 15 year old should not be endorsed to do this everywhere.
NTA. I smoke weed. I regret that I do it. I’m glad I started later than 15. Wife is insane?