Caught my 17 year old smoking weed

[Anon]

Hi. My eldest boy is 17. He's generally a great kid, etc. However, I had my suspicions he was smoking weed (grass, hash, whatever it's called !) for a while. I caught him trying to sneak upstairs when I came in earlier and I knew immediately he was stoned . I made him empty his pockets and found his tobacco. Eventually he admitted only occasionally smoking weeed with his friends at the "odd weekend".

He has never given us trouble before. I'm not naive. I know teenagers experiment, etc. Really don't know how to handle this for the best. My dh wants him grounded indefinitely.

If anyone has any experience, please let me know. Or if you wish, I can pm you. I'm a regular

[felicity]

I tried to pm but couldn't. Will you pm me and I might be able to reply

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[RDR]

I don't have direct experience of this so I'm just throwing out a few thoughts ...
- do your suspicions match with his claim that it is very occasional?
- is he willing to stop?
- how is he justifying it?
- how has he responded? does he see any issue with it? is he defiant?
- how does he justify/respond to issues raised about the psychological effects of dope today? (it is not the same stuff that was around when I/we were growing up)
- is he aware that if he got caught and has a drug charge that he closes down any opportunities to travel to the US?
- how clued in is he about the issues around carrying quantities (ie in relation to charges) and dealing (in the 'but I just bought a bit extra for my mate and he was just giving me the money for it' in a teen's head isn't dealing)
- who are the crowd he is with? are they also doing other drugs? what kind of lifestyles are they living?
- how do you feel about illegal drugs being in your house and how does he feel about respecting that?
- where's he getting it?
- how is he funding it?
- are you seeing an effect in him? has his behaviour, his work, his aspirations changed?
- do you think you could ground him? do you think it would be effective? do you want him to stop? are you willing to tolerate it and hope he'll grow out of it? where is your line in the sand?
There's no one way to deal with this (as there's no one way to deal with underage drinking for example - though I get this is entirely different in that it never becomes legal). I would say don't jump into indefinite grounding - I think there's a lot of conversation needs to take place before you can work out how to play it. You may have a starting point of - eg do not bring drugs into my house but I honestly don't know that you can 100% prevent a 17 year old smoking if they can't see the issues with it (you can of course cut off finances, you can ground them but you can't really do it for forever).
Best of luck. I dread the idea of facing this situation tbh.

[bingbong]

Wow RDR, a brilliant response. I have a 17 year old DS and while we haven't faced this, I wouldn't know where to start if we did so thanks so much RDR for that. OP, good luck with this one. You must have nearly dropped dead when you realised.

[NDM]

I think I'd freak tbh.

Great response RDR, very helpful and proactive.

Another point to add to the mix is that some employers carryout random alcohol and drug testing on their employees, particularly if there are safety aspects involved in the job or nature of business. I appreciate getting a 17 year old to think in a straight line to this point is (extremely) challenging. However you could add this point to your arsenal when the discussion takes place.

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[Grasscutter]

Another question to ask - is anything going on in his life that he feels the need to rely on a drug to cope? Is he trying to block something out?
I would also consider speaking to the parents of his peers and to the school and make him aware of that. No greater deterrent for a lad of that age than embarrassment IME.

[Anon]

I don't have direct experience of this so I'm just throwing out a few thoughts ...
- do your suspicions match with his claim that it is very occasional?
- is he willing to stop?
- how is he justifying it?
- how has he responded? does he see any issue with it? is he defiant?
- how does he justify/respond to issues raised about the psychological effects of dope today? (it is not the same stuff that was around when I/we were growing up)
- is he aware that if he got caught and has a drug charge that he closes down any opportunities to travel to the US?
- how clued in is he about the issues around carrying quantities (ie in relation to charges) and dealing (in the 'but I just bought a bit extra for my mate and he was just giving me the money for it' in a teen's head isn't dealing)
- who are the crowd he is with? are they also doing other drugs? what kind of lifestyles are they living?
- how do you feel about illegal drugs being in your house and how does he feel about respecting that?
- where's he getting it?
- how is he funding it?
- are you seeing an effect in him? has his behaviour, his work, his aspirations changed?
- do you think you could ground him? do you think it would be effective? do you want him to stop? are you willing to tolerate it and hope he'll grow out of it? where is your line in the sand?
There's no one way to deal with this (as there's no one way to deal with underage drinking for example - though I get this is entirely different in that it never becomes legal). I would say don't jump into indefinite grounding - I think there's a lot of conversation needs to take place before you can work out how to play it. You may have a starting point of - eg do not bring drugs into my house but I honestly don't know that you can 100% prevent a 17 year old smoking if they can't see the issues with it (you can of course cut off finances, you can ground them but you can't really do it for forever).
Best of luck. I dread the idea of facing this situation tbh.

Thanks all. I sat down with him after school. He said he started smoking at Longitude. He hangs out with a mix of lads and girls. Some have, let's say, questionable backgrounds. Others don't.

I used some of these lads as an example to him. I put it to him that these lads have zero aspirations. He is well aware of this and he is adamant he wants to go to College. He is in 5th year at the moment and doing well so far. He claims he only smokes the odd weekend as that's all he can afford . He has a part time job. We don't give him money. He said a lot of lads drink and he's not into it as it makes him sick and messy (his words!). He maintains he never smoked at home and doesn't carry it around as he knows it's illegal.

He claims he is not smoking to escape anything that may be going on. He said it is purely for a bit of craic wth the lads. Some of them smoke, some don't.

He said he won't do it again while he is under 18 (yeah right). I said he will be checked by me and his dad every time he comes home. He said that's grand as he was quitting anyway to study for Xmas exams.

I don't know ladies. We have open communication. Jesus, they'd age you

[felicity]

I would also consider speaking to the parents of his peers and to the school and make him aware of that. No greater deterrent for a lad of that age than embarrassment IME.

You really think that would be a good way to approach this? A 17 year olds parents telling his friends parents?


Having been there,done that with my own DS I would say freaking out is not going to help.

I would also say that no matter what law/health aspect study that you quote,he will have an answer back for you.

He is not going to tell you where he gets it and really that does not matter.

What matters here is that he respects your views on this,the same as your views on underage drinking.

If you are worried about him smoking weed more than he is telling you ,contact your local community garda. They will be able to tell you how to contact adolescent services where you will get proper advice and information.If you are in Cork,Matt Talbot services would be the pleace to go. Even if you ring them they may be able to direct you to somewhere in your area.

[NDM]

Agree with felicity.

You might be surprised at the reactions from other parents .

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[RDR]

I also agree with felicity - there is no useful purpose to be served in telling parents.

I also agree that he'll most likely have an answer for everything - though that wouldn't necessarily mean I wouldn't ask the questions; and I also agree that the community gardai may be worth talking to - I was at a talk that they attended/spoke at at I certainly left feeling that they would be hugely supportive of parents proactively trying to do the right thing for their kids.

Personally I would probably push the "where are you getting it?" aspect because the "getting a bit from my mate" and "I get it from the local drug dealer who has a wide range of other shit" would be significant to me.

[felicity]

RDR

There is no way he will tell where he is getting it. What purpose would that serve? He will think his parents want to know so they can rat the guy up. Where he is getting it is not the issue because they can get it in school,at the gym,football practice etc. It s easier and cheaper for them to get drugs now than it is to get alcohol

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[RDR]

Like I said, the purpose for me would be getting a sense of whether it was a bit of weed from a mate, or whether he was buying direct. For me that would be an indication of how seriously involved he was. So who rather than where - and not a name, a type of source. (And like I said that'd be me personally, not saying it is the right thing for anyone else).

[Grasscutter]

That’s why I said consider - not something I’d necessarily recommend actually doing but it is worth giving some thought to and there is the chance that just mentioning you’re considering it might be impact enough.

I recently needed my 19yo to sign SUSI stuff and send back to me - he had every excuse under the sun as to why it was going to take him a week. I mentioned toning the college to request allowing him to use scanner/WiFi or whatever he didn’t apparently have access to and he miraculously sent the stuff to me within ten minutes. I wasn’t seriously going to ring the college but the mention of it was enough to get him to act.

It’s just the recent experience of the power of that idea of privacy being invaded that made me suggest it I couldn’t actually imagine contacting parents or the school but I’d be letting him think I hadn’t ruled it out.

[felicity]

Like I said, the purpose for me would be getting a sense of whether it was a bit of weed from a mate, or whether he was buying direct. For me that would be an indication of how seriously involved he was. So who rather than where - and not a name, a type of source. (And like I said that'd be me personally, not saying it is the right thing for anyone else).

I understand completely what you mean but my experience is that they won't give up that information at all and actually I don't think they even asked that in the MT centre. It may be a mate but next time the mate is not around he can just go direct or the mate is the direct contact.

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