An Effective Way to Teach Your Kids to Not Smoke Pot

The reasons about not smoking pot are taught at school as soon as the child enters elementary school, and those reasons - which are most of the times false and misfounded - are often what lead teenagers to try many drugs, not just marijuana. Ironic? Yes. But how is that so?

When you tell a kid all their childhood that something is really really bad - almost evil - and that using it only once will screw up their life forever, and when those same kids try it to defy authority figure by using it and then figure out it's not as bad as they were told. When they first smoke and realise the next morning they aren't addicted and that they have not lost their mind... They may begin to think that what they were told about other drugs was false as well. They may even try a quickly dependence-building drug, like Heroin (or tobacco).

So, if you want to be a responsible parent, start by having a conversation with your kids about drugs. But not the usual "If you do drug, you're going to rehab". You need to help your kids make CONSCIOUS choice about whether or not they will use pot. You need to teach them about drugs, and what they do, which means you also need to teach YOURSELF (and please, do more research than going to the Above the Influence website, because if you do so, you are going to fail miserably if they ever try those drugs - because most things the War on Drugs tells you about marijuana is False or Altered).

You need to guide your kids through the difficult decision of saying no to peer pressure, but not because you told them to never smoke. You need to help them say no because they have chosen so, knowing what are the true effects and side-effects of this drug. They may even try one day, just to see if what they were told was right. We call that curiosity. But someone who enters the "mystery realm of drugs" backed with cold, hard facts (and not fantasy from half-century old studies), is less likely to become dependent to any drugs than someone who only has the facts from the War on Drugs. Because you need to face it, most of the things concerning marijuana in those pamphlets are bullshit. Get over it.