ITG

Medical Marijuana Use Edges Towards Mainstream
07/20/09 | KTVU.com | Press Release

She's a pot-smoking preschool teacher and soccer mom.

This Bay Area mom, who wants to remain anonymous, said she explained to her own children that marijuana is "mom's medicine."

With a stigma still swirling around marijuana users, she said she's not quite ready to come completely out of the shadows. Still, she wants people to know medical marijuana smoking has gone mainstream.

"I think a lot of them are like me, saying hey look I'm a good mom. I work. I pay my taxes. I pay my rent," said the anonymous teacher. "But I use a medicine that's marijuana. I'm not a second-rate citizen. And I think that's why more and more of us are coming out."

An unscientific online survey found 52% of the women who responded, those 25-to-60 years old, admitted to smoking marijuana at least ten times a year.

This PTA member says her doctor first suggested cannabis when she was pregnant with her fourth child 13 years ago and nothing helped her morning sickness. She was reluctant to try it, she said "because of the stigma. It's pot. It's an illegal drug. I was brought up on the 'Reefer Madness' training."

She said she believed the lessons in the 1936 film that taught that the demon weed would make you mad. But she tried it, she said, and delivered a healthy baby girl.

Three years later, she says it was legal and her doctor prescribed it for her joint pain and headaches. By then, her older children were teenagers and smelled her secret.

"So I had to come clean with them and I started having very open conversations with them no, I'm not out getting high. No, I don't smoke like the kids in high school behind the bleachers, I'm using this as a medicine."

Frank talk about drugs is what's advocated in a Safety First pamphlet the California PTA hands out.

"First choice for teenagers ought to be abstinence," said Marsha Rosenbaum, one of the founders of Project Safety First.

But Marsha Rosenbaum, who helped write the drug information pamphlet, said federal studies show half of teens try pot before they graduate.

"If they still choose to use alcohol or other drugs at least can use them in the least harmful way possible," said Rosenbaum.

With the smell of weed wafting through the house, this preschool teacher said so far all four of her children just say "no way" to drugs.

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