Cannabis, My Son and Public Smoking

The other day my wife and I were taking our son to the park. He is a pre-teen and has not yet stepped out of childhood and retains his sense of wonder and innocence. As we were walking up the stairs to the field, we passed an elderly gentleman in a motorcycle jacket. He was sitting calmly by himself, openly smoking a joint. Even being in Washington state and a longtime cannabis user, I am still taken aback when I see someone just firing up like that.

This morning on the bus I looked out the window and noticed a huge billow of smoke coming out of a sunroof. As I looked on, I watched this guy load a bowl into a pipe, drip some hash oil on top and burn another one. All while sitting, stopped, in traffic on a busy street. I’m no prude, but the law still prohibits smoking weed in public parks and in places where children frequent (and even though there is a debate about stoned driving, surely smoking WHILE driving is frowned upon).

The same rules have long applied to alcohol and I generally think it’s a fine idea to keep it that way, especially if we want legitimacy and equality in the weed movement.

I digress.

As we passed this smoking fellow and continued up to the field, my son commented to us, “That’s some stinky weed.”

I almost stopped in my tracks. At first I thought he meant it in an impressed/endearing way and I was like, “When did my son become Snoop Dog?” Then I realized he was just commenting that he didn’t like the smell. My wife and I exchanged an inquisitive glance and asked him how he knew what weed was. He told us that his social studies class was discussing the legalization of cannabis. Okay, we thought; but how did he know what it smelled like? Yes, my wife and I like to smoke weed, but we’ve always been very good about discretion and I was concerned, for a moment, that my son had observed us somehow.

As it turns out, he knows the smell of it from a few skiing trips he’s taken with relatives. He said he smelled something funky once while skiing, asked what it was, and remembered the smell. Whew. I have no problem with my son knowing I am a cannabis user, but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want him to be an adult before we had that talk. Maybe I’m being naive, but I’d like him to hold on to his innocence as long as he can.

It was a nice little reminder that, if I want my son to hold onto that innocence, I need to be extra diligent now that I know he knows the smell. It actually was kind of a gentle way of finding out just what he knows about cannabis without really asking him directly.

The coolest part, to my mind, was after we discovered our boy knew the scent of dope my wife smiled and casually said, “Well, I’d much rather him be happily smoking a joint than drinking alcohol.”

I couldn’t agree more. It was some stealth parenting. We surreptitiously installed it in my son’s mind that we aren’t really offended by weed and we would prefer it to alcohol. If, down the road, that means he opts to try cannabis over a shot of whiskey, I’ll take that as a win in my book. Laughter and powdered donuts are by far my fatherly preference for him over hangovers and vacant inhibitions.