As a parent I’m worried

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.’’

Raised near Chicago, our new fortnightly Monday columnist, Lana Hart, emigrated in the late 1990s. She worked in the areas of human rights, diversity in employment, and migrant support while raising her three kids with her Auckland-born partner. The family have lived in New Zealand’s biggest city, its most remote village of Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, and are now in fastest-changing Christchurch. A seasoned traveller, Lana spent over a year driving from South Africa to Morocco, has worked on every continent except South America, and visited various parts of the Philippines 10 times. She likes writing about social themes, scientific and human curiosities, and political and environmental issues. She is fascinated by evolutionary biology, human psychology, and gender differences.