COMMENT

Mum took drugs but should she tell the kids?

You took drugs, but what do you tell the children? And what do you let them
do? Ruth Lumley puffed long and hard on that one. There was the school code
to consider but there was also her husband, and they knew about him.

What I'd really like to know about the thousands of people who think
cannabis should be decriminalised is what they tell their children about
their own experiences with drugs. Do they tell the truth about stoned
evenings they once spent perhaps still do staring into space and talking
rubbish? Probably not, if the parents I come across are anything to go by.

Yet these are parents like me middleclass, middleaged, who tried all
manner of drugs in their youth; many of them smoke the odd joint now. But
unlike me, when it comes to their children they pass a veil over their
headier days, and those who still smoke dope sweep the evidence under the
tablecloth the minute the teenagers walk in.

I'm not sure what they're afraid of. Undermining their authority with the
offspring? Giving drugs the parental seal of approval? Looking like a sad
old hippy? Or do they fear that watering down the message of the moment
which is still Just Say No rather than explain why could have dire
consequences?

Like every generation of parents I look back with a shudder at the risks I
took, and agonize about my children doing the same kind of thing, whether
it's with motorbikes or sex or chemicals. I'd be horrified if my 12yearold
started doing drugs before he's a lot older, and on balance I'd probably
rather he said no until he's about 90. But this is the real world. At 12,
he's already been offered a spliff on the street. Surely it's better that he
understands as much as possible about what he's saying no to, or how he
might feel if he says yes. This approach certainly worked with the only
adult I know who grew up with parents who smoked dope openly she's got
well into her thirties without getting addicted to anything riskier than
chocolate cake.

And since I've got firsthand experience, why not pass it on to flesh out
the sometimes dodgy information he gets elsewhere? There was never a policy
decision in our family about this; the kids just asked questions and we
answered them. My son first saw his dad roll a joint on a country walk when
he was about nine, asked what it was and was told. It's inevitable that the
children want to know why a sevenyearold who died from sniffing glue was
doing it in the first place, and why Leah Betts would want to take E on her
birthday.

I talk to them about the drugs I used to take (loads of dope and a smidgen
of acid in the Seventies; too much coke and some weird stuff called MDA in
the Eighties), and they know their dad smokes cannabis, though hardly ever
in front of them, and has taken ecstasy. We've talked about the illusion of
control coke can give, and how you can get to rely on that buzz, and that
dope can make you feel good, but also paranoid and uneasy, and that people
who smoke it all the time tend to be deeply boring. We're blunt about the
hazards of crack and heroin.

The bottom line of everything we say to the children is that no drug
alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or E is risk free. Their dad also makes a point
rather optimistically of saying he never even touched a fag until he was
18. There's not much chance our brood will wait that long, and that in
itself is a sign of the gulf between their youth and ours. Of course, it's
crossed my mind that it may be far safer to be economical with the truth.
It's so much easier for children to deal with certainties than wrestle with
the notion that their parents, who are supposed to be good, take drugs,
which everybody else says are bad. Yet their choices have to be made in a
context of mixed messages and few certainties.

Nor does it feel very comfortable to be communicating ideas which aren't
consistent with the school's line on drugs, or with what their friends'
families think. So the boys are aware there's a double standard and that
they have to be careful about what they say otherwise the head might have
a good case for expelling me.

All this would probably be less of an issue should cannabis be legalized.
I'm not sure that much else would change. I don't think we'd start rolling
joints more openly or go to score en famille. Although as a parent I'm in
favour of decriminalization, I can't help but feel there's something to be
said for the current situation, where a drug which in my book is pretty
harmless has the glamour of illegality. At my most cynical I wonder whether
legalization would point my kids towards something a little more hazardous
in the race to be cool.

And perhaps that is the real reason for being up front about drugs that
there's nothing like knowing your mum's done something to strip it of
glamour and mystique. My son is mad about the kind of magazines and song
lyrics which make drugs seem like a way of life for really cool people. But
he also knows that his mum is utterly uncool, however hard she tries. If I
play my cards right I may even manage to pull off a total role reversal, in
the manner of Edina and Saffie in AbFab, with him coming up squeaky clean as
a rejection of my sad past and my sad friends. On second thoughts, I'd
rather he were a little less pofaced. But only time will tell.