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PHOENIX — Parents Connie & Ted Martel were upset by their 17-year-old daughter Carrie last week after finding a small amount of seeds, stems and borderline catnip they say “barely qualifies as cannabis” in her sock drawer while putting away laundry.
“Soon she’ll be able to buy cannabis at a dispensary. We want to make sure she’s ready for that responsibility and understands what it means,” explained Ted. “But if this is what she thinks is weed, she’s got some serious growing up to do.”
Arizona voted and passed Prop 207 in November, making it the 13th state to make cannabis legal for adult use along with Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Once votes are certified, it will be legal to possess up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational use. However, after finding Carrie’s sad excuse for a stash, the Martels have some serious doubts about whether their daughter is mature enough to make such purchases.
When Carrie’s parents found her “cannabis” — a single, brown, dried-up nugget of unidentifiable compressed plant matter in an Altoid tin, devoid of any odor or semblance of trichomes — they sat her down to have a long talk about her spending habits and overall taste. As it turns out, she was spending a lot more than she realized on Fortnite accessories, iced coffees and ditch weed.
“They don’t teach this stuff in school,” her mother Connie sighed after showing Carrie how to make a weekly budget and track her spending in an Excel spreadsheet. “But we’re turning this into a net positive: now, she’s saving up for a bong she says she never thought she’d be able to afford. Her days of smoking out of empty soda cans from the recycling bin are over.”
Overall, the Martels say they’re still proud of their daughter, and that this was a learning experience for all of them. “At her age, we didn’t have a store with a wide selection of flower to choose from,” said Connie. “I had to go to my dealer’s apartment and sit through an entire movie on cable with commercials before they even thought about selling me an eighth. There were no choices, I just paid whatever they told me… and that was just last year! It’s our responsibility to make sure the next generation has a better future than we did.”
However, Carrie’s parents are firm about their daughter doing her own laundry from now on. “We trust her and want her to feel like she has privacy,” admitted Ted. “I mean, it could have been a lot worse. It’s not like we found a MAGA hat or something.”
With a little help from her parents and responsible users nationwide, Carrie will join a generation of consumers who won’t remember a time when they could face criminal charges for buying, possessing and using cannabis products.
And those empty soda cans she’d hoard to smoke a pile of cabbage? Now they’re being recycled, with the proceeds going into a high yield savings account.
Paulina Combow is a writer and stand-up comedian. She contributes to Reductress and Ladyspike Media and has had funny essays published in The Washington Post. Find her at paulinacombow.me
