My Son Confessed That He's Tried Pot! Should I Punish Him?

you should smoke with him! Enjoy.

Did you ever experiment with anything? Did you teach your child right from wrong behavior? If so, trust that they have the common sense to do what is right.
If you have not, then there is nothing you can do at this point to save them. If you didn’t know what to do when you needed to, you will never know............

Im sorry Michelle but you are wrong. The moment you punish your child for telling the truth they will lie to you. Is it illegal? Yeah, will that stop teens from using? Hell no. I am a teenager and I can tell you whether using alcohol or weed about 85% of high schoolers have done and a solid majority do it on a regular basis. You have to teach your child to be responsible with the drug and not try to punish them thinking that if you do that they will stop, because just from personal experience the kids who go the craziest with alcohol and drugs are a lot of the time the kids with the stricter parents.

your son confided in you.... hooray for him doing the right thing and hooray for you for being the kind of parent who is approachable. ask him what he thinks about punishment? have an open fair discussion and lay out issues together. it's not the end of either of your worlds and it is an opportunity to become closer and more trusting of each other. grab that brass ring

Drug testing your kids will be a one way ticket to them running out and doing anything they want. You are not smart to do this. You are taking something small, making it into something huge and inevitable cooler than it ever would have been. Or, your kid who is actually a good kid decides they just can't win and why not do everything under the sun if you are expecting it from them anyway. Please re-think this strategy. It's a one way ticket to making a situation worse.

I agree with LC ... drug testing your child will not help you to keep them off drugs . But its sure to make them know you dont trust them ,and when you dont have trust in them ., they wont in you . I have a 17 year old daughter ... she KNOWS she can come to me with anything she feels she needs to talk about . She told me she has had pot ,and i didnt judge her . Just let her do the talking and threw my 2 cents in where i felt it was important . No yelling , no screaming , just calm talk . I didnt condone it , but i realize there is no stopping it either . I want to know what is going on in her life ...if they arent comfortable with talking with you ... you are in the dark . They will do it behind your back and you wont have a chance to try to instill any sense of wrong in them ... they will just rebel . She knows for sex too .... come talk with me .. no judgements ,only a few questions and she will be on the pill in a heartbeat . She is a beautiful , 17 and a half year old ..so far no need thank god ... I have had to do something right .

Most of you idiots are stupid. Children using drugs can be a one way trip. Talk to your children about the hazardous of using drugs. If you feel that they are lying, get them to take a drug test. If they refuse, then lay down the law. You will feed them and give them a place to live until they are 18. When children think they are grown, prepare them to be independant, by warning them that live by your rules, and not the street-kids. Tell them that you love them, but they have to live by your rules, in the home and in the streets. It is rather hard to give them advice when you smoke.
But many parents never visit the schools during the day to check on their children, attend their children activities. They need to see and meet their friends. You are their parent (s) not their buddy.

Drug testing your kids if they trust you enough to talk to you about it? Sure. Next step: handcuffing them their beds on the weekends.

Liz.....perfectly said!

I wish more were with us. People are so easily swayed by fear and they can become so ignorant in the process. I love to smoke bud responsibly and I have never tried heroin or crack. I don't smoke cigarettes, I don't drink that much at all, and I don't do any harder drugs like cocaine. The war on drugs isn't about protecting people, it's about money and where it flows. It has to flow through the tobacco, the alcohol, and the pharmeceuticals so that the right people on top can make all of the money. Throw in the prison system for icing.

Putting aside one's stance on pot use, there is something wrong with using pot: it is currently illegal except, as you correctly pointed-out, in certain medicinal settings (getting an illegal prescription isn't one of them). If a cop were to catch this kid with pot, the kid would have a problem.

I completely agree with you haveanopenmind. I am also an educated professional, and one of the highlights of my week is a good wake and bake on Saturday and Sunday mornings !

You are so wrong. You obviously have not see the devastating effects of using pot and/or other illegal drugs. Families have been torn apart because of these drugs. Lives have been lost as a result of these drugs. Beautiful youngsters have been made into very ugly people because of these drugs. And yes, the fact that they are illegal is a big issue. You would not encourage your teenager to steal just once in a while would you? Stealing is wrong because it is illegal - so is using these drugs even on a "recreational basis."

@mc.....I've known people that have smoked pot for 40 years, have kids and grand kids, work a steady job, pay their bill etc....if you know people with bad experiences that you attribute to pot smoking maybe you should consider other factors. just saying

@MC.... Everyone's bodies and minds react to drugs differently. That being said, the most harmful physical effect of marijuana is from inhaling burnt plant matter. That can be avoided by eating it. You litterally cannot imbibe enough marijuana at once to over dose without dieing from something else first, such as asphixiation. Psychologically it is the same as alcohol: some people can handle it, some people cannot. It is not a gate way drug. People who were predisposed to doing harder drugs didn't need marijuana to get to that point. And if you can't behave responsibly while intoxicated, then it's common sense to not do it again. If you don't have that common sense, the drug is not the problem, you are. You cannot lump all drugs into the same category. If you could, then alcohol and prescription drugs would be illegal too. Each drug is obviously different. As for the issue of legality....bad argument. Making something illegal does not make it wrong, only punishable. Public opinion swings back and forth a lot. We used to think prohibition was a good idea, and then we learned trying to control people to that extent only backfired in the form of organized crime. We still haven't learned. We still hear about people getting shot over marijuana drug deals because making it illegal created an artificially inflated value. Making it illegal (it used to be legal in the U,S.) was what made it dangerous. Before you condemn marijuana for ruining lives, you should consider that the people who it hurts most likely had a pre-existing psychological problem.

MC, you are dead wrong to directly link these alleged bad experiences with drug usage; telling of people you very well may have made up or don't even know. First of all, having done marijuana, drunk alcohol or done any actual drug (marijuana is not one of these because it's a natural substance ideally with no chemical modification done to it and only serves to relax and stimulate) these things do not automatically lead to worst case scenarios. Doing one does not account for killing, stealing, gateway drug bull crap that law officers made up (if someone is addicted and abuses drugs then chances are they will do plenty of them, but not all people are the same) or any actual crime. Now criminals and juveniles may do drugs while taking part in a crime, but it's not the substance itself holding a gun to their head and saying "do this." What I'm saying also does not account for substance abuse, which is very different from recreational usage of drugs and can be detrimental like anything else not taken in moderation (IE trans fats can make you a tub of lard when abused).

Seriously man, you need to do some research before using slippery slope tactics like you've done and debating issues that you've clearly not thought through. Come back with some hard evidence that says all these horrible things that happened to these families happened while under the influence of every drug in the book--I'd particularly like to see hard facts on marijuana actually accounting for these things (you'd be hard pressed I'll tell ya that much)--and maybe people will take you seriously.