Found DS (15) Weed/Cannabis huge stash

[CallMeRachel]

I've researched topics on this here but not many replies on teenagers or addictions sections so posting here for broader advice and opinions.

I have been aware for a while that my 15 year old son occasionally smokes weed with his friends. I have always told him that I don't approve and that I believe it can be triggering to mental health issues and to never bring it into our home.

Recently he's been smelling strongly of weed on a daily basis.

He got a fairly large amount of money for Christmas this year from us as well other family members.
This money was given as he asked for money to buy clothes in the sales.
He doesn't have any income from a part time job or anything.

I've gone into his room tonight while he's out and sitting on his bedside unit in full view is a Kilner jar 3/4 full of weed.

I feel completely out of my depth with this and how I should deal with it. It seems that cannabis is so widely used/accepted now that I'm unsure how big a deal this actually is.
I've never been a cannabis smoker and disapprove of it as I do believe it can be harmful to mental health as well as be a gateway drug.

Honestly, wibu to take the whole jar and hide or dispose of it?

Should I ask the police or school for help? Will they help or will they be only interested in getting a case against him?
I don't want my house searched and my child arrested and future prospects ruined for what could be a stupid phase.

The amount that's there is making me worried he's started dealing, there's no way that's just personal use?

Can anyone tell me what that amount of weed would cost?

He's out overnight at a friends just now and I can't sleep for worrying how I should approach this. It's all very well saying report him to the police, get him arrested etc but that's not going to help either him or us in the long run.

I need to handle this carefully but don't want to be a passive parent, nor a OTT one that goes overboard and makes matters worse.

AIBU in being absolutely clueless on how to deal with this and to be asking on here for help and advice?

A 10cm kilner jar is about a weeks worth of weed OP. He's not dealing it. Maybe sharing it sometimes.

Well I don’t claim to be any kind of drugs expert but one of the most memorable prisoner I ever dealt with was a young man suffering from a cannabis psychosis. He would routinely trash his mums house when she wouldn’t give him cash. The last time I saw him he was naked sitting in his cell covered in his own shit , masturbating. The local mental health unit wouldn’t take him because it was drug induced. ( not sure of the policy now as I’m not in uniform anymore). When you consider the brain doesn’t stop developing until around 24 you could have 10 years of regular smoking impacting on it causing untold damage. We have no way of knowing if the OP has a killer jar of skunk or what ( who cares what anyone calls it we all know what it means) but a kilner jar is a lot to claim personal use at 15. I would confiscate it for now and not say anything and see what happens.

*kilner jar obvs

Maybe even smoke a joint with him

FFS.

The brain is a fluid organ which never ever stops developing and changing

Maybe even smoke a joint with him

DON'T DO THIS.

When he was 16, I found a grinder in my sons bedroom, it is now at the local tip.

You can see he knows, I know, but he hasn't dared to ask.

We compromised and said we will accept very occasional use, and have bought drugs test piss on a sticks from Amazon.

So we will from time to time accept a very faint line, but a strong one when he assured us there was no dope involved earns him a grounding and removal of funds.

We found disrupting him quite effective.

Then he met this gorgeous 16 year old whom he clearly adores, she told him from day one that he was a dickhead for even contemplating smoking dope or even smoking.

Don't think he is smoking at all at the moment.

I would be removing it, he's been told the rules and has broken them, and is openly breaking them. You told him it wasn't permitted in the house and he's brought it in regardless. Whilst I wouldn't be involving police, I also wouldn't be tolerating the rule break.

Weed isn't a gateway drug. What drugs you take depends on you, nothing else. Some people will only ever take weed, some will take harder drugs as well, some will go straight to hard drugs.

Your ds is unlikely dealing, it would be bagged up in small amounts if he was.

I don't like weed because I think it is a dossers drug. I know people that do nothing but smoke weed, they've thrown their lives away. Maybe weed just appeals to lazy people.

I'd take the weed away, stop giving him money and have a 0 tolerance policy on it.

I'd bin it, not least because now you know you it's in your house, you're (technically) in possession of it and breaking the law.

Twenty years or so ago, I'd have said it was nothing to worry about, but the weed that's produced now is so much stronger than the stuff I used to smoke that I believe it can have long-term effects on MH. I can't even smoke it any more, it just gives me The Fear.

I'm convinced it can play a role in mental illness, and not just because of a rise in diagnoses of cannabis-induced psychosis. My DB was a weed fiend, and he was initially diagnosed as bipolar, his diagnosis is now cannabis-induced psychosis and the proportion of clients with that diagnosis that were referred to the housing support project I worked on until recently has risen exponentially.

In terms of a gateway drug, I'm unsure. I think it's hard to discount the ease of access to other drugs when someone is already buying from dealers and mixing in that milieu. I certainly tried pretty much everything in my youth, but I would never have smoked dope if I hadn't smoked ciggies first, and my DB started his drug use by sniffing glue.

Keeping him short of cash will make it harder for him to buy the stuff, and I'd recommend some pretty severe, but time-limited sanctions initially, and see how that goes.

On one drug-awareness course I went on, we were told that cannabis is 6 times more carcinogenic than tobacco. That might put him off (it has also just struck me that one weed fiend of my acquaintance was diagnosed with lung cancer at 46 - can't believe I hadn't made that connection until today).

Both my sons have smoked weed and then gone on to use harder drugs. My eldest hasn't used Heroin as far as I know but he isn't likely to tell me that. My youngest does smoke and its effect on him was to become lazy and he dropped out of college. All he was interested in was smoking pot. He refused to get a job and we refused to give him money, he then got himself into a lot of trouble with dealers and we had to pay a lot of money to stop our house being burnt down etc. He is starting to turn a corner now, he has a job and has paid us back, just a couple of hundred pounds to go. We always refused to have drugs in the house but my eldest flouted our rules time and again, my biggest regret was not throwing him out because I feel his influence and the way we behaved came across s enabling him and to some extent it was. We were trying our best to clean him up and get him off drugs but all that happened was our youngest saw us as saps who would put up with anything.

Our eldest is now not allowed to live at home, we love him but cannot allow him to cause chaos anymore, our youngest has realised that we are not the saps he thought we were, he knows that he is on the verge of having to leave as well. Right now he is behaving himself......long may it last.

Get rid of the weed and ground him. He won't like it but you need to nip this in the bud and quickly. Find a drug awareness course and put him on it. Weed nowadays is coated in so much shit that it does have an effect on mental health.......not the weed itself but the chemicals that they spray it with are what causes mental health issues. Psychosis, depression, severe anxiety, bowel disorders etc, can all come from weed use. I do not tolerate it in my house but I cannot follow my DS when he is out to stop him using it. Be prepared for a lot of obnoxious behaviour, it's very hard to stop them doing something like this.

Unfortunately keeping them short of cash can lead to them dealing to get weed/cash as payment and then it spirals from there .....it cost thousands for us to get dealers off his back. Drug counselling may be the way forward.

The cannabis that I use is not covered in any kind of 'shit'
Cannabis helps me with anxiety and sooths my gut problems

Obviously getting involved with people operating outside of the law can be problematic, as evidenced by reports of the extreme difficulties with predatory criminals.

This is why it's a good thing that cannabis is increasingly legalised, people can then use it safely because they don't have to tangle with predatory criminals

Uggggrrr...i hate the stuff...get rid of it. Why should you put ip with it in your house?

I would be very concerned if my 15 year old was smoking pot while his brain was still developing. My 2 DC have been warned against this by me for years and know I wouldn't tolerate it, I am a push over in many ways but I draw the line at this. It comes from my 20+ years working in mental health and now the evidence is there to back up what we were seeing on the wards.
I have also personally known regular users who while they have not developed serious MH problems they dropped out of life or did not live up to their potential.
Once he is in these circles however I think all you can do is ban it from being in the house and limit his money to buy it.
Does he have other interests like sport that he could be diverted with?

Flush it down the loo and then seek help from police school etc

I should add, conversely, I am looking into getting some medicinal cannabis for my mum for her chronic pain if the pain clinic are not able to help. I am aware that it does help with chronic illnesses and some people get relief without the more harmful side effects pain meds have.
So I am not against it perse but I am when it's teenagers with brains still developing.

I would be very worried too and that is despite having had a lot of mainly male friends, (DP included) at that age who were total potheads who made it into adulthood perfectly fine, more than fine, actually have really successful careers despite being the occasional toker still. Please don't involve the police or school, just make sure the channels of communication are open between the two of you. You wanted to know how much weed costs. It's about £220 for 1oz. I do feel for you, one of my DSs is definitely a risk taker and I know I will have all of this to come, especially as it is in the genes.

Just to say, on the cancer front a df died leaving behind dw and DC as a result of lung cancer from weed-smoking (age 50)

I hadn't put together that link either,but its pretty obvious and far more scarey than tobacco

I would flush it. It will teach him not to bring any into the house.
It’s also illegal to be in possession, so he is putting your family home at risk if the police were ever tipped off.

Flush it.He will more than likely go mad at you (the madder he gets the worse his habit is), but he knew the rules.Explain to him again that he is not only putting his mental and pysical health at risk but he is also incriminating you by having that shit in your home. Threaten to go to the police next time,and carry out that threat if needed.The worst he'd get is a caution,but the fear hopefully would shock him enough to stop him.Good luck op.

Oh dear god, all these dope heads with their contribution of “ everyone’s different , it’s not all bad, I know a top brain surgeon who regularly smokes weed” ....

Aye, right

My son is only 13 and I caught him smoking weed in the summer holidays. We have done everything we can to stop it. We took his stuff off him, stopped the wifi, etc.

We grounded him, he climbed out of the window and ran away - luckily we were able to track him on the find friends app.

We took his phone away, he became violent, we called the police - he didn't care just smirked.

He has so many problems including school refusal and anger, he is under ed psych and we believe he has some kind of PDA.

The best advice would be to yes by all means remove the jar, but keep a calm hands off approach to keep lines of communication open. We remind our son that what he is doing is wrong and we certainly disapprove, but we also regularly remind him we love him and to talk to us if he feels he can.

What broke my heart more recently was when I asked my DS why he did it he admitted that he knows is vile, moody and angry and does it to 'chill out' and be 'pleasant'. Of course I have offered alternatives such as taking him to the GP and counselling but he refuses to engage.

My sincere good wishes for all parents out there dealing with this - you can only truly understand the horror and persistent anxiety as a parent of a child who doesn't appear to need or want to be helped.

My son thinks it is absolutely fine to regularly smoke weed - it is so normalised unfortunately and his supplier is a 14 year old in his year at school.

I have tracked his phone and have the addresses of the 'drug dealers', but I reckon if I went banging on doors I would be met with some completely chocked parents who had no idea their child was involved in weed let alone dealing.

Don't call the police, it may seem right now but it really won't help.

Good luck whatever you decide to do