Uh oh, this sounds like trouble. If you're not eating enough family dinners with your children, they are likely to become drug abusers, at least according to The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University:
"Compared to teens who have frequent family dinners (five or more per week), those who have infrequent family dinners (two or fewer) are:
- Three and a half times likelier to have abused prescription drugs.
- Three and a half times likelier to have used an illegal drug other than marijuana or prescription drugs
- Three times likelier to have used marijuana; more than two and a half times likelier to have used tobacco."
What can you do about this? Well, for starters, next Monday is Family Day, so it's time to bust out the salisbury steak TV dinners!
CASA created Family Day — A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™ in 2001, as a national movement that encourages parents to frequently eat dinner with their kids and be involved in their children’s lives as simple, effective ways to reduce substance abuse among children and teens. Family Day is celebrated on the fourth Monday in September.
Actually, maybe it was just my house where we dug the salisbury steak TV dinners. The point is, the family that dines together, uh, apparently saves more of the household pharms for parents. Or something. Obviously the raw "dinner to drugs" spectrum is not so concrete; presumably eating dinner together is the most tangible symptom of an entire lifestyle that creates family cohesiveness and thereby keeps kids off the soul-destroying path of drug use. I don't get it myself; I rarely ate with my family and I didn't turn to a life of soul-destroying drug use until my college years, but hey, surveys and statistics don't lie.
Meanwhile, I had the misfortune of stumbling across a blog post from a concerned parent who realized that a number of her peers - get this - still smoked marijuana. It's true!
As it soon became apparent, and as a complete shock and surprise to my wife, it appears that most of her "so-called" friends are casual and/or recreational users of marijuana. :0 Folks, these are 40+ year old mothers with children in elementary and middle school. A few are stay-at-home-moms, and others are your typical working-class professional type moms. Other "marijuana moms" names were mentioned who weren't at this event (I would consider that getting thrown under the bus), and it was suggested that my wife should try it to help ease her stress and calm her nerves from the hectic pace of raising a family.
My wife and I are not naive or prudes. We both had our fair share of partying, drinking, and....gulp....smoking marijuana, but folks, this was in....no pun intended, high school. Marijuana never did anything for me. I could never understand how someone could interpret that drug-induced feeling of paranoia as something pleasurable, but to each his own.
Yeah, but now the subtle peer pressure to conform is setting in, and as the other moms try to schedule some communal pot smoking, these folks are on a different train:
Bottom line: We have grown up, moved on from the partying scene, and don't have any interest in this type of illicit and foolish behavior.
Sad but true, after much discussion with my wife, she must now distance herself from these fools.
I realize there's nothing particular notable about this sentiment. To each, his or her own, etc. etc. It just reminds me that I live in a very sheltered slice of society that doesn't consider a little pot smoking to be a pernicious evil. Oh wait - that little sheltered slice of society is actually MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and perhaps these bloggers are the dopes. Well, a boy can dream.
