Letters to the Editor
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Missing the point
The substance is unimportant. She could be addicted to lime jell-o, for all it matters.
The issue here is behavior -- of both mother and son. (And father, too, for that matter.)
Mother demonstrates many of the basic signs of an addict: manipulative, defensive to the point of paranoia. That she smokes for years, and *then* gets medical certification suggests that the back pain may well be an excuse. It seems like she'll do anything to preserve her high.
And son has called her on it. Is he being moralistic? A prig, perhaps? A jerk? Of course, he's 15. Look up jerk in the thesaurus: It says "see adolescent."
There must be more here than the LW knows, because as other writers point out, their families had drug-using parents and kids who went through DARE and survived just fine.
Still, the son is forcing a choice: The pot goes, or he goes. And he does have a point, if descriptions of the mother's behavior are accurate.
As a parent, which would you rather keep? And don't think he's necessarily bluffing. Show him the door? He may not walk through it for a year, or two or three. But he will walk through it, and he won't come back. (This is the point where I start going metaphorical; forgive me.)
This family has some big issues going on, and discussions about the propriety of drug use are off the real topic.