Talking with your children about Marijuana around the dinner table
It’s dinner time … Invite your kids to come to the table with one or two things they know about marijuana being legalized for Canada – let’s learn together.
Let the kids to talk first, they’ll probably teach you something you don’t know, and it will help relax the atmosphere from being too preachy. Let your family know it’s just the start of a learning curve as experiences with legalization unfold in Canada, one dinner talk won’t solve it all.
For your own homework, marijuana is a drug that has risks, so focus on the facts, not your emotions. Here’s our Crossroads guide to help along the way:
1. Highest risk of Marijuana harm is for youth aged 15-24 because the brain’s pre-frontal lobes are still developing; those parts of the brain responsible for decision making, memory, reasoning, problem solving.
2. Seniors are the next highest risk group; increase of falls and dangerous drug interactions even if it is medicinal marijuana. This is not well understood by seniors.
3. Marijuana causes risk across all ages; Too much marijuana consumption you will experience delirium, psychosis. Second hand smoke can affect children significantly.
4. There’s different potencies in all products – buyer be informed, there are so many varieties with different strengths and amounts, and effects are dramatic .
5. Be careful with edibles – pot brownies and pot gummy bears, pot potatoe chips,etc. The edible effects kick in an hour or two later, and thus can easily cause over eating of marijuana infused foods, resulting in spikes of visits to hospital emergency rooms.
6. Psychosis now or later is the most serious danger associated with pot smoking; Hallucinations and frightening paranoia can result from Marijuana ingestion, increased anxiety after the temporary high is gone.
7. Marijuana smoke is four times as damaging to your lungs as cigarette smoke.
Sourced from Context TV guest — Dr. James MacKillop director of the Peter Boris Centre For Addictions Research and co-director of the Michael G. Degroote Centre For Medicinal Cannabis Research.
It’s also our calling from God to pray for the well being of our Nation, and all Canadians. As legalizations unfolds, join us in praying for the proper care and education for marijuana use in Canada, that life giving messages will be circulated in media, schools and homes.
Family devotions on Marijuana; Read Mark 7: 14 – 23
Discuss: Jesus lists some behaviours that make us unclean before God – what are they ?
* Does marijuana fit into any of those categories in verse Mark 7: 14-23?
* Side discussion; I Peter 5: 8-9, Ephesians 6:10 -17
Pray: for our own wisdom, protection and self control, for our friends, family, and our nation as it adjusts to legalized marijuana. Pray for our Government.
Lorna Dueck / Crossroads CEO
