Kids & Cannabis

By Angie Roullier

I am the last one to tell you when to talk to your kids about cannabis, or any drug for that matter. You know your offspring best. You know their maturity levels, their influences, and their environments. And there isn’t anything saying that you can only have “the talk” once. I urge you to readdress the topic as many times as you deem necessary. Cannabis is not going anywhere and the more everyone knows the better.

Talking to your kids

The business of weed has been around these parts since my kid was in middle school, yet we really didn’t have “the talk” until she went to high school. Granted, when she was younger there wasn’t the ocean of different cannabis products that we have today. With the evolution from homemade pot brownies to 200 mg candy bars with almost identical packaging as common store brands, I knew the responsible thing to do was to give her as much of my cannabis knowledge as she could absorb.

So, one day after school we sat down, and I put her through the “plant” portion of my cannabis retail training. We covered terpenes, cannabinoids, edibles, and the packaging of these products, as well as what F.E.C.O was used for and that, in fact, the amber colored syringe was not black tar heroin. Questions were asked and answered that day, and even though kiddo is an adult now, we still have hearty conversations about new cannabis research, pot politics, and spot-on stoner memes.

Kids in the House

There is a very real, and completely preventable, problem: parents are not doing enough to keep cannabis away from the little ones. Cannabis is a drug. I simply do not understand why parents are not treating it with the same respect as their prescriptions and booze. You put safety locks on your cabinets containing chemicals, you keep your alcohol up high and out of reach like your pills. But you’ll leave the pot gummies on the counter?

This is not an adult-access issue. This is not a packaging issue. This is a piss-poor parenting issue. If your child gets into the whiskey, it is your fault. If your child gets into your pills, it is your fault. But if your child gets into your weed, it turns into a pot shop-proximity or packaging problem?

Knock it off.

Stop trying to shift the responsibility. Do better by your kids.