Letters to the Editor
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Mistaken premise
The LW is coming to the table with a completely mistaken premise, IMO - that there is anything inherently wrong with an adult mother of teenage children smoking marijuana at home.
The LW needs to let go of the idea that the pot smoking is a problem. It isn't. It's time for the 15 year old to learn an important lesson, and that is that just because the nurse at school, the DARE officer and the President say that smoking marijuana is evil doesn't mean it is.
Compassionately teaching the 15 year old this lesson will do him a world of good throughout the long years ahead in his life. This is not to say that I am recommending that he take up marijuana smoking. Only that he comes to understand that there are plenty of good people out there - his mom included - who smoke marijuana, and that it doesn't make them bad or crazy or even dysfunctional.
The alternative here is for all the adults involved to bogusly empower the teen by allowing him to wield his anti-marijuana stand against his mother. He will then be setting himself up for a journey into adulthood where he's likely to view people who might smoke marijuana as evil miscreants. This could turn into the same type of immature, annoying self-righteousness one occasionally sees in a precocious child lecturing adults on why they shouldn't smoke cigarettes.
The correct course of action is for the LW/auntie, mom and dad to initiate the boy into manhood by revealing that what the DARE officer says isn't necessarily reality.
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Get the kid to Al-Anon
This kid needs to learn what he can control and what he can't.
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Uh oh
o l j b is right that 15-year-olds can be insufferably self-righteous and judgmental. I hate the DARE program for the suspicion and judgmentalism it seems to foster in children. One of my children refused to take an aspirin even when he had excruciating headaches, so paranoid did he become of EVERY drug. On the other hand, this 15-year-old's mother's habit is illegal and could potentially land her in prison. And, as with all major addictions, the very fact that she can't quit ironically means that she really should quit.
Parents HAVE, don't earn, their authority over their children (though some squander their right to have this authority). But teenagers are in the horrible and dangerous position of no longer being children, yet not quite being adults. I'd be sorely disappointed in my children when they were in their teens if they didn't feel comfortable questioning authority, including mine. In this nether world they're old enough to start not just forming but living by their own sense of right and wrong. And living in a haze smoking an illegal drug that could land one in prison is, quite arguably, wrong in most people's books. The boy's insufferable inflexibility in his ultimatum is rather like his mother's insufferable inflexibility in refusing to consider his stance--in other words, it seems to be an inflexibility he's come by through nature or nurture, from her.
So if the boy is going to grow up undamaged by this, it's time for mom to grow up. I just hope she does, especially because I'm reading this barely a week after a woman near and dear to me was convicted of a felony and sent to maximum security prison without telling anyone in her family, leaving her 25-year-old twin sons to figure out what the hell happened to mom???
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Maybe he should turn her into the cops...
So let me get this straight, the mom is using an illegal substance and trying to take the moral high ground? Gee, I can't imagine why the kid isn't buying it! I will admit that the school system pumps this "drugs are bad" crap a little too much at kids (being of the generation that had the most anti-drug messages thrown at them then any previous generation before it, I know what that's like) but clearly the pot is getting in the way of a real relationship with her son.
I think it is rather telling that she values her friend's opinion more then her own sons. This, as much as the pot, says a lot about where he really stands in her life. I grew up with a mother who married a man who treated me and my sister like crap while growing up. My mother recently started coming to her senses about what kind of person he really was and even then it was only because he started treating her a fraction of the way he treated us. But even today I still don't understand why she turned a blind eye to what was going on all those years. My respect for her is severly diminished, and will probably never fully come back.
If this woman does not get help, she will have a son that will spend the rest of his life resenting her for rejecting him and putting a plant above him on her list of priorities. If she does not change, then her son should turn her into the cops and let her reap the consquences of her actions. I'm sure her namby pamby husband will not stand in the way since he hasn't done anything so far!
I hope this young man can start a brand new life and learn to move on from the pain his mother caused him. He deserves better then he is getting right now.
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Pot is not harmless
Regarding those responders who will inevitably defend pot use as "harmless," (usually daily pot smokers themselves), in my experience, pot often makes people paranoid, selfish, obsessive, lazy, furtive, and unpredictable. I lost my best friend to pot; saw her personality devolve into a series of lies and emotional outbursts. It was very hurtful to be a part of and I couldn't take it anymore. I can't imagine dealing with a parent or authority figure who acted this way (while denying that their behavior was in any way abnormal, as they lied/screamed/hid/insert drug-addled, anti-social behavior here). As a mother I can't imagine turning my back on my child for such a pathetic (or for any) reason. Shows you the power that "harmless" drugs can have on the mind.