Paige, Mike and Lauren Cecchi. (Photo: Yahoo News) |
It was Thanksgiving afternoon in
Madison, Conn., four years ago, and the Cecchi family was getting ready for
dinner. Just before the turkey was served, Paige Cecchi, then an 18-year-old
college freshman, gave her older sister, Lauren, “the look,” Paige remembers.
“Then we realized Dad had caught ‘the look,’” she says of her father, Mike, who
is now 66. “And Aunt Denise picked up on ‘the look.’”
Wordlessly, and much to their
collective surprise, about half of the assembled guests headed out to the
chilly patio, where they lit up a joint and smoked marijuana together as a
family for the first time. “Pass, pass, puff,” Mike describes it. “Pass, pass,
puff. Everyone is looking out the window at us.”
Whom do you smoke with? That is one
measure of social acceptance of weed, and when it comes to parents smoking
recreationally with their children, an exclusive Yahoo News/Marist Poll finds
it to be far more common than one would think, but not nearly as common as,
say, families sharing a bottle of wine.
The younger the children, the less
likely this is to happen. Of those parents in the survey who say they use
marijuana (which is 18 percent of all parents), 93 percent say they do not
smoke in front of children younger than 18 years of age. In contrast, nearly
half of parents of adult children — 47 percent — say they have used marijuana
with and/or in front of their kids. On the flip side, only 26 percent of adults
say they have used the drug with or in front of their parents. This discrepancy
likely reflects the fact that a greater proportion of millennials currently use
marijuana than baby boomers.
So while it’s not the norm, the
family that smokes together is a glimpse of a possible future, should trends
toward legalization and acceptance continue. The survey reveals that it is less
taboo now for Americans who have had experience with marijuana to be open with
family and friends.
“It’s more relaxed than when I was
their age,” Mike Cecchi says of the fact that he could not imagine sharing a
joint with his own father when he was a teenager in the 1960s but now does so
regularly with his daughters. “There’s still a stigma, because the law hasn’t
changed everywhere, but it’s so much less than it used to be.”
In that way, he is typical of his
generation, the poll finds, because 72 percent of baby boomers say their
parents did not even talk about marijuana with them, while today, only 28
percent of parents say they have not had that talk with their kids.
Mike began using weed in 1966, when
he was 18, he says, and has continued to use it throughout his life, though he
hid it from his children for many years — smoking only in his bathroom and
opening the window to dissipate the smell. In retrospect, there were hints, his
daughters say now. (Paige and Lauren’s grown brother smokes rarely and declined
to be interviewed for this article. Their mother, who the family says prefers
wine to weed, also chose not to be included.)
First Lauren, now 28, started to
notice that “when I was in high school … when I had a party, I might find
[Mike] outside with the high school crowd.” Then there was the time that Paige,
now 23, vacationed in Jamaica with her parents when she was a high school
sophomore. They took a tour of Bob Marley’s house, Paige remembers, and “my
dad’s the first on line” at the cannabis store there.
“That’s when I first started to
figure out he might” have some experience with the drug. She would not be the
first to figure such a thing out. Many Americans who use marijuana, 62 percent,
think their parents have at least tried it.
After the Jamaica trip, Mike’s use
became a sort of open secret in the Cecchi house. He continually reminded his
children that possession of the drug was (and still is) illegal in Connecticut
and that they should not drive while under the influence of any substance. At
the same time, though, “we had this quiet understanding that we all enjoyed
cannabis,” Paige says. “But we kept it to ourselves.”
Agrees Mike: “I didn’t go out of my
way to say, ‘I have it, so you can have it.’ They were going to have to find
their own.”
Other parents report the same
“don’t ask, don’t tell” dynamic. But, in fact, 60 percent of parents who use
marijuana say their children are aware of it, and 72 percent of adult users say
their parents are aware.
“Until the past couple of years, we
have persisted with the slightly awkward, slightly humorous lie to our children
that we don’t indulge,” says a Los Angeles lawyer, the father of two
college-aged children, who, like many interviewed for this story, asked that
his name not be used because even though possession of marijuana was made legal
in California on Election Day of last year, he feared a possible tightening of
federal enforcement under the Trump administration. “It was this knowing
charade.”
The transition from unspoken to out
in the open varies from one family to the next. For the Cecchis it came when
each daughter was in high school, and Mike told them directly, “I know what
you’re doing,” Lauren remembers. He made no effort to stop them from smoking,
she says, but he did make it clear that they should do so carefully. The family
rule was that a cellphone call from Mom or Dad must be returned within 15
minutes, the Cecchi parents’ way of monitoring their children’s partying. “If
Dad called you and you were so messed up that you couldn’t speak, that would
have been the end,” Lauren says.
For the L.A. lawyer, the moment of
acknowledgment came when his then-high-school-aged daughter came home one night
“and found me smoking out back with a buddy.” After that, they developed a
winking goodbye routine when she went out for the evening.
“Don’t drink and drive,” he would
say.
“I don’t drink and drive,” she
would answer.
“Don’t smoke weed and drive.”
“I don’t smoke weed and drive.”
“Don’t do coke and drive.”
“I don’t do coke.”
The step beyond, to parents and
children smoking together, is apparently still a greater hurdle, as evidenced
by the fact that the majority of parents say they never cross it.
“When they’re little, you tell them
there are things that are just for grownups,” says one Colorado mother of two
young adults, who have hinted that they would like to indulge as a family. At
least she thinks they are hinting. She hasn’t allowed the conversation to
proceed far enough to be sure. Yes, hers is one of eight states plus
Washington, D.C., in which recreational use of the drug is legal, but she is
still reluctant.
“Now they are adults, so I guess
now I think there are things that are just for grown-er grownups,” she says. “I
wouldn’t have sex with my kids in the room, and I feel the same about getting
high.”
“I’m not sure my family is evolved
enough to do it together,” he said.
For the Cecchis, the decision to do
so was spontaneous, when they went out to the patio before Thanksgiving dinner.
“It wasn’t just us,” Mike says, noting that a number of aunts, uncles and
cousins joined in. “There was enough of us out there that it had to be half the
party.”
Now the family members not only use
cannabis (their preferred term, as it has more medicinal connotations and fewer
“stoner” ones, they say) when they gather socially but are going into the
cannabis business together. Paige works for Women Grow, a group that encourages
female ownership of cannabis-based companies, and also is developing her own
line of marijuana accessories. Lauren is a handbag designer whose line includes
designs that incorporate the symbol of the marijuana plant. And Mike, whose
career has been in pharmaceutical sales, is an adviser and investor.
Not so for the L.A. lawyer. Smoking
with the parents was his older daughter’s idea, he says. His wife was neutral
on the subject, and he was at first reluctant, but he agreed because his
daughter seemed to think it would be a bonding experience.
Read More: Yahoo News
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