During my Gen-X childhood it was totally normal for my friends’ parents to smoke cigarettes while driving a car full of kids home from swim team or soccer practice.
At a barbecue at my house last summer, a friend discreetly handed out small Mason jars full of homegrown cannabis , excess from a backyard experiment that left him with far more than he could use himself.
In the 18 states where cannabis has been fully okayed for recreational use, consuming it is legally no different than drinking a glass of wine.
As we move closer to what now seems like the inevitable legalization of marijuana on the federal level, or at the very least full legalization in most states, the social rules around cannabis are also bound to evolve.
The problem with this, of course, is that harm is subjective — what a parent might consider equivalent to consuming a glass of wine, or taking a medication for high blood pressure or chronic pain, might be seen as drug use through more conservative eyes.
And then there’s the casual shade.
Jamilah Mapp describes this sort of side-eye over cannabis use as part of the general bullshit of parenting comparisons, no different than shaming other moms for relying on screen time or allowing soda.
She lives in Southern California and legally and openly enjoys cannabis around her 6-year-old daughter in a way that is different from, and also rooted in, the way she grew up.
Personally, I believe cannabis to be less harmful to the human body and spirit than alcohol, and I believe it can be therapeutic, for sleep, for anxiety, for pain, in a way that alcohol just isn’t.
“We grew up in the DARE era, when drugs were this very bad thing but drinking was socially acceptable because it’s legal,” Emily Farris, writer and host of the podcast Mother Mother and self-identified “geriatric millennial,” tells me.
She’s comfortable drinking in front of her children, and while she’s open about the fact that cannabis exists and that it’s something adults enjoy, it’s not something anyone openly does in her home when the kids are present.
As she is quick to point out, for white moms, like Farris and me, frank discussion and use of cannabis is evidence of a certain kind of privilege.
Getting so high you can’t form a coherent sentence is not compatible with parenting — though almost every parent I chat with mentions that Legos, blocks, Barbies, and fingerpainting are all improved by being a little high.
When I ask them whether modeling responsible cannabis consumption could be helpful, they dismantle one of my long-held beliefs, one I know many of my parent friends also hold: Americans binge drink because we lack a healthy drinking culture compared to Europeans, and parents who enjoy a moderate glass of wine with dinner are showing their children what drinking should look like.
“It’s called the harm-reduction model, this idea that if you just introduce alcohol to kids in a non-hyped way, not a forbidden-apple way, you show them that you can have one beer or one glass of wine with dinner, then that is going to turn them into responsible drinkers,” Epstein explains.
To date, there has not been good data showing how cannabis use affects adolescent brains, and there are no nuanced studies that could provide guidelines indicating how the age of the user, the amount of THC, and how it’s delivered might lead to different outcomes.
Alix tells me that her sons, who are now almost 18 and 20, had never seen her use cannabis until very recently, when she shared a joint with them at a concert.
On a family trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, she was struck by an exhibit on brains that highlighted the way that neural pathways are formed and how repeated behavior, or substance use, can shape the brain.
Alix, who has been consuming cannabis fairly regularly since college, made sure that her children did not see their parents smoking pot, while keeping open the lines of communication and speaking frankly about her and her husband’s experiences with it, both good and bad, something Mapp also identifies as important.
Just as Farris doesn’t use made-up, cutesy words for marijuana or human anatomy, we try to explain simply, but honestly and clearly, any questions our children pose to us, whether they’re about racism, Ukraine, or our friends who, through a complicated mix of open adoption, divorce, and re-partnering, have four moms and two dads, all with very different roles.
My son has registered the idea that smoking cigarettes is bad, and while I’m wary of some of the class-based implications around that, nicotine is so addictive, and tobacco companies are so unscrupulous, that I’m comfortable with a blunter than usual conversation as far as that goes.
I worry that today’s cannabis is both far more powerful than the dusty baggies of ditch weed I smoked in high school and a little too efficient, making it impossible to ignore the core truth: We use cannabis to feel different.
I’m cognizant of Eisenberg and Epstein’s warning about casual use turning into early exposure and access, but I’m equally aware that in every other aspect of my parenting, I’m offering my children a clearer window into adult behavior than the one I grew up with.