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Young stoner (symbol photo)
Photo: Lucas Ottone / Stocksy United
On Tuesday evening it was that time again: as I was about to go to bed with a book, it rattled under my bedroom window.
Chairs went crazy, low giggles in the courtyard, the crackling of Rizla leaves.
Shortly afterwards, fat clouds of skunk rose, wandered through my hallway into the living room, where they merged with a second hashish cloud front from the corner pub.
My apartment smelled like a teenage booth, like cheap, obtrusive weed.
Not a new phenomenon, not even one that gets my blood pumping.
But one that feels like a pile.
Whether I go to the discounter or take a walk - everything is "buffed" everywhere.
The pandemic fueled cannabis use, I suspect.
In fact, according to a UN report in 2020, consumers used cannabis and sedatives more frequently, while party drugs were used less often.
At home alone, ecstasy doesn't make much sense, that somehow makes sense.
Crises have always encouraged the desire for escapism, excess or reassurance.
Hashish is cheap in Germany, en masse and almost as easy to get as legal drugs.
But as a middle-aged mother of two teenage kids, I am faced with a dilemma.
In my youth I tried one or the other myself.
However, it is in the nature of things that my children can only benefit to a limited extent from this “expertise”.
The attraction of the forbidden lies in the fact that you try it yourself and parents are usually the last ones who want to be part of it.
Downplaying it in an endless loop
I'm worried.
I am noticeably annoyed by the belittling of cannabis-consuming parents who emphasize in an endless loop that smoking weed is far better than drinking, and medically helpful too.
So what? I then ask.
Can the kids safely drag themselves into these THC bombs that are currently on the market?
Or the stuff with synthetic cannabinoids that according to the European Drugs Report 2021 has already claimed deaths?
Scaremongering, oh really?
According to the United Nations drug agency (UNODC), the level of the psychoactive substance tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in cannabis has tripled in Europe over the past 20 years.
Even the softer variants of my youth have left their mark.
I've seen people literally go to the dogs in filthy stoner flat shares through years of hardcore consumption.
I have friends who have become so weak motivated by notorious smoking that they never learned a trade and were on the ropes for life.
Not dramatic, but not beautiful either.
I know parents who have watched their son sell all kinds of drugs in school for years, helpless, maybe just perplexed, who knows.
Rap trip with cough syrup
This is not about the joint now and then, I wonder what happens when the intoxication becomes a ritual, perpetuates itself, fills all the gaps that the pandemic has also torn into the lives of young people. "They just sit around all the time, smoke, play around and keep quiet," says my 17-year-old daughter. Of course, she's also smoked pot herself. But she currently finds it even more fun to move around and get to know people than to doze off in an armchair.
Being young is seldom coherent or logical.
That is why much of what this generation has in common is completely contradictory.
On the one hand militant veganism, climate protection and yoga exercises, on the other hand smoking weed and beaming away.
Here feminism and #MeToo, there misogynist rap and the praise of Xanax, Percocet or codeine - drugs whose abuse allegedly killed stars like the US musician Lil Peep.
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My 15-year-old son listens to his music, and I try to throw in as unobtrusively as possible how stupid it is to dampen your brain with benzodiazepines or cough syrup.
"Good beats, stupid lyrics," I say.
He acknowledges this with a thoughtful frown.
He does sports, doesn't smoke or drinks alcohol (I think).
For him, the lyrics are just part of rap culture so far.
But there are already the first stoners in its class.
And in the multitoxic teenage universe in 2021, cannabis is just one drug out of many on the market.
And who is rubbing their hands?
Organized crime reacted quickly as usual to the upheavals caused by Corona.
Stricter border controls or closings at the beginning of the pandemic were circumvented by increased use of the sea route.
The dealers changed smuggling routes, increasingly using postal and home delivery services for deliveries.
And like most companies, the large criminal organizations also rely on digitization.
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Do you want to support such mafia networks by investing money in drugs?
Of course not.
But that's an adult line of argument.
This does not prevent young people from smoking weed, despite a possibly politically correct general attitude.
I am for the legalization of cannabis and the controlled sale, this is the only way to deprive the cartels of at least one source of income.
Protecting the kids from abuse would remain a task even with legalization.
We talk about drugs in our family, of course.
I report on horror trips and annihilated livelihoods, of often dearly paid unrestrainedness at the techno raves of the nineties.
I remember the weak lungs inherited in my family.
References to the effects of THC on the adolescent brain.
But even as I write this, I find the declamatory nature of my warnings incredibly boring.
Ultimately, the kids themselves have to withstand the pressure - in the group, in school, in themselves. I can only look very closely, listen, pay attention and keep in touch. And intervene as early as possible in an emergency. Whether that succeeds depends on a large number of factors. And if it fails, one should be careful with judgments. But at least I see it as my duty.
