only a stoner would think kids and drugs mix.
IIRC, you don't have kids.
But would you drink in front of them? Feel like you had your life ruined by parents drinking in front of you? Perhaps even including you in drinking once you got older?
Other parents drinking around/with their children?
What makes everything kind of worse is a sort of closeted approach. Go hide and smoke, then play with kids. It's depressing, really.
But most people have no qualms about having a few drinks while watching TV and/or playing with the kids. Equally depressing, however, would be to go hide and slam a few shots from a flask and then returning to play with the kids.
Part of the whole experience with children is demonstrating acceptable and appropriate behavior. They can also read between the lines and also see when lines have been crossed (as they get a little older). They'll see when a few drinks/tokes is fine, but all of a sudden when Dad is sloshed/stoned and creating a negative impression, it's remembered as a positive learning experience (a negative experience), a lesson learned.
links to studies showing this connection, everything i have seen warns about under 18 use, and several studies showed no change for users starting at 20 vs 30 in long term use.
If you are seriously interested in it, google: prefrontal cortex youth adolescent marijuana impact effect
That should point you in decent direction toward some study/research data.
I just don't have the time at this moment to actually take a stroll through the internet looking for the full study data (I might be able to access jstor, might, and could copy some articles if they exist - otherwise, some study data might be available). I hate linking to articles that merely quote/reference study data, I prefer the actual peer-reviewed data.
I didn't want to leave you hanging on that front before I made another post.
I don't feel it makes a case against legal marijuana in the slightest, but it does add further conviction to a point regarding limited access to youth (perhaps prescription-only for those under 21 or 18, legally available at the tobacco counter or in the pharmacy after that?)
The point of that data I am discussing might actually be the cause for any degrade in IQ points compared to the baseline. What I've read discusses lowered attention span, heightened impulsiveness, etc; essentially, hallmark problems that typically result in lower intelligence due to worse performance on the education front. Which would be among the many possible implications of a degradation, if you will, of the prefrontal cortex. Really, it just "grows wrong", it "maladapts" ... they are finding the teenage/youth brain isn't as resilient as once thought. It adapts, and can recover, but with frequent/persistent use, it can also adapt "wrong", or in other words it maladapts. They are seeing the same thing with prescription amphetamines for ADD/ADHD - the brain is actually adapting, but with an outcome nobody is really looking for as an ideal adaptation.
In short, we do need to be careful about what chemicals the youth ingest, and it's a good idea to keep the message out there, but dressed up better than the DARE-type message.
But that shouldn't have an impact on what adults consume. Broad research now concludes the "keep it out of the hands of children" approach is actually best for many things, but it also demonstrates that such restrictions on adults are rather pointless, or should be kept the way they are today (depending on the specific item of discussion).