12 year old smoking cannabis.

[caringdad66]

My 13 yr old son(year 8), has told me that one of his friends has been smoking cannabis.
Apparently he gets it from his older brothers,who also give him cigarettes and e - cigs.
My son says he has never smoked anything ,and I believe him.
However am worried that by being around this boy,my son will eventually try drugs too.
Am aware that the majority of kids will experiment with drugs,but surely not at 12yrs old??
Should add that telling the boys parents would not do much good,as they are not at all bothered.
Who do I tell?
Do I stay out of it?
Thanks for reading.

Oh no, not a great situation! Firstly, all credit to your DS for telling you what's been going on, that's a really promising sign of his maturity and his ability to not just blindly follow his peers' lead
I understand what you're saying regarding concerns that by hanging around with this group he might be likely to follow suit, but the alternative is to stop him hanging around with them and in my experience, that's very unlikely to succeed! My yr 8 DS has been having issues (well, we as his parents have the issues really!) with his friends all watching and discussing porn. I'd dearly love him to go off and find an entirely different group of friends but that's not likely so have continued to discuss it with him. We had progress on Sunday when he volunteered the information that at a sleepover the previous night, a couple of them had been watching it, and my DS had taken himself off to another room to play on the Xbox. I was just so relieved that he was taking control of the situation himself and learning how to manage things like that.
I suspect the best thing for your DS here is to encourage him to find out all about some of the issues associated with smoking cannabis - the legal position, the evidence around links to mental health issues and to discuss with him what he might do if / when someone offers him some or encourages him to try a smoke.

As for telling the other boy's parents...... oh that's a toughie! I always think I'd want someone to tell me if my DS was up to something he shouldn't be. But other parents don't always feel the same way and that sounds like the case here. If you don't think they'd be bothered then telling them would achieve absolutely nothing, sadly

Great message, thanks for the advice.