My knee-jerk reaction is to be irritated by all parties involved in this problem- the neo-hippie pot enthusiast, the ultimatum-yielding kid, the concerned "aunt" (why does she go into such detail about how they're not friends; they're family!?), and fucking Tennis, with his/her speech about how neglectful Mommy is being. There really isn't enough information in the letter for me to have an opinion on this case (didn't stop Tennis, obviously). Maybe pot enthusiast mother walks around stoned all the time, neglecting responsibilities, in which case I don't blame her kid at all for making threats. Or maybe the kid is just being a judgmental prick. I know that I, from the time I was a very little kid, was bothered by my parents' pot smoking (at age 7 or so, I negotiated with my father for him to confine his toking to one day a week). Perpetually stoned parents are indeed a drag, for reasons you might not even be able to fully articulate when you're a kid. But then, so are drunk parents, and parents with any number of other weaknesses, none of which are generally grounds for the loss of parental rights. You can't neglect the back pain angle, either. Pot is a vastly preferable pain killer than vicodin or oxycontin.

More than anything, I feel that there's not enough information in the letter (perhaps because the LW spent so much time talking about they're family, not friends?), to make a judgment, and I think Tennis was a douchebag for doing so, unless there's more information in the letter that he/she isn't making public. Until there's further evidence, my sympathies lie with the mother. Maybe her kid DOES need to move out, so he can see the rest of the world isn't the model of non-dependency he's so enamored with.

I can't believe I spent so many years blithely pouring cheap food into my cats' dishes without thinking about what was in it. It was only after my cat Uma developed digestive issues that I thought hey, maybe I should read the ingredient list on the stuff. Uma stopped puking and put on a good pound after I switched my guys to foods (Wellness, Innova) without wheat or corn. I still worry about pet food contamination, though.