I did the only sensible thing

It was a stinking hot day and I had only just got home. I don’t know many people in the new ‘burb. Correction, I don’t know anyone in the new ‘burb. So when I saw a young male blither on to the property, dump his bike down on the lawn and stumble around on shaky legs, I thought ‘‘Hello, hello, what’s all this then?’’

So like a sensible woman on her own I opened the front door, locked it behind me and approached the yoof, saying ‘‘Hi there, can I help?’’

He had a nice face, but his eyes were glazed over and he looked at me as if I was the most preposterous thing he’d ever seen in his life. I introduced myself and asked what his name was, to which he muttered something vaguely intelligible and lifted a pathetic paw to shake my hand.

I asked him if he’d taken a drug and if so, what was it, as I gestured to him to sit down in the shade of a tree. Then I went inside, poured a glass of water from the tap and took it back out to him.

From my assessment, he could have been high on drugs; was having some sort of mental health episode; or was severely dehydrated.

We sat under the tree for a while shooting the breeze, albeit silently, till suddenly he looked at me sharply as if I had only just materialised, and asked what had happened.

I recounted to him the last 20 minutes and he looked appalled, got up, put on his backpack, and wheeled his bike off down the road.

Half an hour later I saw the bike untethered and leaning up against a shop, but no sign of the lad. Very mysterious.

Two days later, after the lawnmower man had been, a cellphone appeared on the veranda. I presumed the phone was his, but later concluded he’d found it in the grass and, believing it to be the home owner’s, had kindly left it on the veranda.

There were two numbers you could access on the phone so I dialled the one that said ‘‘Mumma Bear’’ and left a message. A woman with a posh voice quickly replied, asking who I was and what did I want.

And so started a long and very roundabout conversation as I related the story of the blithering bicyclist fetched up on my property. I asked if I was speaking to Mumma Bear, to which she replied an emphatic ‘‘no’’.

Apparently she rented out rooms and may very well have recently rented one to the lad I described. But she was at pains to assure me that she only rented to sensible boys, and this boy, if he was indeed her tenant, had presented to her as a very sensible boy.

Apparently, during his audition for the lodgings, he had disclosed to her a passion for biking in the hills. She divulged that she lived in the country and often came across dehydrated cyclists suffering from sunstroke, which she believed her possible tenant was, in this case, suffering from.

Feeling as if we were role-playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, crossed with the assignation point of Dr Sutch, I agreed to leave the phone in my letter box on the proviso that she would make the necessary connections for it to be picked up by a third party.

Now that I am au fait with the phenomenon of dehydrated, blown-off-course cyclists, I will make sure to keep chilled water in the fridge, a rug close by for snoozes on the lawn, and have ordered a Florence Nightingale outfit from the catalogue.

It’s the sensible thing to do.

When sex work was decriminalised in 2003, it made sense to me. Shining some legislative light on an industry that had functioned in regulatory darkness for millennia seemed the right thing to do, at last allowing health and safety standards, tax obligations, and employment laws into workspaces of the industry’s staff, clients and business owners.

By most accounts, the Prostitution Reform Act took the crime out of sex services in New Zealand. After 15 years and many evaluations, including surveying sex workers, many now agree this contentious legislation has had a positive effect on, at least, the working environment and safety of sex workers and their clients.

Could cannabis users benefit from similar thinking? Should we get the growth and sale of marijuana out of dank tinny houses and gang-controlled crops and into the light of our everyday?

Medicinal cannabis is a no-brainer; it’s alarming that such an effective pain relief didn’t hit the legitimate market decades ago. Dealing with laws around its recreational use is much more vexed.

I have always liked the idea of regulating aspects of the sector to improve both the quality of the product and the conditions for people working in the sector. For example, if growers were part of a legitimate, not hidden, supply chain, government could ensure consumers are aware of the level of the crop’s THC – the plant’s active ingredient, responsible for most of its psychological effects. Governments around the world already regulate how alcohol and tobacco products are marketed so their alcohol and nicotine levels are known to buyers. The notion that a regulating structure could bring consistency to a drug used by 13 per cent of Kiwis (the UN Office on Drugs and Crime tells us) sounds as sensible as legitimising prostitution work.

But as discussion of cannabis legalisation increases after the government announcement of a binding referendum on the issue next year, and as my kids blast through adolescence surrounded by risks and distractions my generation never had to face, I have recently questioned my thinking.

As a parent, I am worried about the normalisation of weed — worried that it becomes as common and accepted as seeing a group of workers puffing on cigarettes on the street during smoko/vapo, or passing an outdoor bar filled with jolly drinkers. Some friends visiting from the legalmarijuana state of Colorado recently reported people openly smoking dope on the streets, despite public consumption remaining illegal. The neighbourhoods around high schools, they said, generate plenty of afternoon business for local growers. For my extended family in Illinois, where its medicinal use has been legal for two years and 2019 is likely to bring recreational legality, cannabis is easy to source and casually discussed in many circles. If New Zealand follows the trend and votes yes in the referendum, having weed as part of our everyday lives is something we will have to be ready for.

But extensive research into the longer-term effects of marijuana use on the teenage brain leaves no doubt this is not a harmless drug for younger people. As brain imagery improves, we can see the visible effects of chronic cannabis use on the memory and executive function-related parts of the adolescent brain, including shrinkage, inward collapsing, and reduction of neuron volume. Countless experiments show negative effects across many areas in life due to lower motivation, poorer health, and decreased life satisfaction for even moderate teenage users.

In the interests of my 16-year-old, whose decision-making pre-frontal cortex is on sick leave at the moment, with few signs it is coming back to work for a couple more years, I’m not sure I want a society where skunk smoke wafts happily through the public air, growing his list of daily temptations. I understand taking risks is my son’s evolutionary duty so he can leave the family cave to explore more interesting savannahs, but is dangling such a harmful option in front of his ever-searching gaze just sending a message that using dope is an acceptable risk in our culture?

More vulnerable still is my daughter of

12, increasingly looking outward to shape her fledgling ideas of the world. If I admit Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch and Sandy from the original Grease helped form my version of ‘‘cool’’ for my 12-year-old self, the Youtubers my daughter follows must be significant belief-shapers. In our new world of normalised spliff-smoking, might these pop culture opinion leaders tire of playing with their cats and talking about shopping excursions, and turn to featuring, for example, new products for vaping or reefer-rolling for beginners?

OK, I’m not a catastrophiser. I know it is our family that sets out the value system and standards of behaviour for my kids, not the rest of you. And I know marijuana, if decriminalised, will have restrictions on age, places of sale, and proximity to areas for young people. But in a society where it is all too easy to say yes to harmful substances that are available, celebrated in pop culture, and reinforced in everyday life, it makes my job as a parent much harder.

I have until November 2020 to think about whether I want to decriminalise the stuff which – on paper at least – makes sense to me. If only I could ask for a third option in the referendum, a box to vote ‘‘Yes. But not until 2028 when my kids’ brains are fully formed.’’