The 'drug talk'

A Salon columnist recounts the tale of giving his 15-year-old son a lecture about drugs - after smoking a doobie in front of his son at a Steely Dan concert:

"Well, obviously, I don't think smoking marijuana is a bad thing," I said. "Actually, in a lot of ways it's better than drinking. Drunks kill a lot more people and do a lot more harm to themselves than people who smoke dope. I don't smoke that much, but sometimes I think I should smoke more and drink less. Marijuana is a more interesting high than alcohol."

Zach said, "Mmm."

Somewhere in the course of this lecture a stray thought blew through my buzzed brain like a brightly colored piece of paper. I realized with horror that my lofty pronouncements about the mind-opening virtues of marijuana would lose some of their credibility if I were to start babbling incoherently like Cheech or Chong. I had to focus.

"But you can abuse any drug, including marijuana. It's probably better to wait a while before you try it. Like 'til you're 17 or 18, or in college. The longer you wait, the better."

Zach grunted.

The talk progresses from marijuana, to a panoply of other possible drug choices, on into the Sex Talk... and the upshot is a strangely straight edge son heading into college a few years later. Is there a moral to the story?

[S]ometimes actually telling your kids in a formal way what you believe is OK. Even if all you're telling them is that you want them to be a good person, try to make the world a better place, and avoid the brown acid.

Word.