Dialogue: Reefer madness among parents of today is hot pot issue

By KATE BELGRAVE

I'd like to begin this yea-marijuana analysis by telling a somewhat dodgy story of the day a couple of friends and I got so spectacularly stoned on a big pile of gooey bud that we nearly burned up the house and its resident infant.

This excellent evening took place several years ago, a few days after one of our number produced a little pink screamer. Our friend planned to raise the child on her own. Her aim was to prove that it was possible for a mother and child to get through life sans bloke.

Needless to say, the novelty of this project wore off completely some 72 hours after the child arrived.

Our friend had neither slept nor (if her glassy-eyed stare was anything to go by) blinked since the baby was born.

This other friend and I took things in hand. We turned up at the new mother's house with a bottle of wine, some food and the reefer. We placed the infant in a far bedroom, where we couldn't hear it unless it really applied itself. Back in the lounge, we rolled out the reefer and smoked it up. Then yours truly - chef extraordinaire - went off to do a little bit of cooking.

To cut this story short, I came very close to burning the whole of Wellington down. It was all terrifically predictable, of course. I put some oil on to heat, then had a little lie-down. The only reason I caught the flames in time was that I was sent to the kitchen on a second errand and was re-acquainted with the first. Lifting the saucepan lid, I was greeted by a small wall of flame.

Fortunately, I got this pyre outside. Unfortunately, I was so smashed that when I came back inside, I put the saucepan right back on the element. Fortunately, I went back. To this day, I remain grateful that I did not set that house, and that baby, alight.

I could tell you 1000 stories like this - stories of nights spent at houses where we nice, white, universityeducated types smoked a big heap of reefers while the babies slept.

I'm hardly in a position to pass judgment on this behaviour. I mention it because it points up what should be the point of the marijuana debate: children are being born to a generation (mine) that does not believe in moderating its behaviour in their interests. It seems to resent the suggestion that it should modify any aspect of its behaviour in the interests of children. The extent of the vehemence that follows this suggestion always surprises me.

"I'm not giving up my dreams for the baby," an acquaintance hissed, just before his first-born arrived.

I hear that line all the time.

Which is why I laugh when people try to argue that the hot pot issue at the moment is decriminalisation. Decriminalisation is not a hot issue. It is a non-issue. At the very best, it's yesterday's issue.

Right now, I'm staring at a 30-year-old Gore Vidal article which promoted the legalising of pot and an even older one in which a couple of British MPs were reported placing full-page advertisements promoting the same thing. As far as a lot of us are concerned, marijuana is so present that it is legal. (It's as if we just skipped the paperwork.)

The true issue is that we are living in a time when one is so concerned with realising one's own ambitions and one's visions of oneself that one believes that one should always be true to those visions, even when one has children.

If one was a groovy, pro-pot, happening type before conception, one feels one should continue to be one after the birth. One does not wish to sacrifice one's image when one has a child.

Which is all very well, except that your choice of info points up the relationship between parental behaviour and the behaviour of youngsters.

I have before me a report of a Columbia University study that revealed that teenagers who don't get along with their fathers are more likely to use drugs.

I have another article in which teenagers scoff at the gateway theory, pointing out that if all marijuana smokers ended up as heroin addicts, their own parents would be heroin addicts.

What else do you expect, except that sort of cynicism?