Weed use… the demotivating factor hurting students and particularly boys

“Everyone smokes weed.” I’ve heard this from dozens of students throughout Connecticut.

Of course, these are social types and perhaps not very different than those that went out in my generation who drank instead of smoking.

Despite being a former criminal prosecutor and one of those rare birds who never tried pot, I am not an anti-legalization marijuana crusader. I’m genuinely ambivalent on the issue. But I am not ambivalent about the overuse of marijuana by teens on the Connecticut shoreline.

Due to writing Motivate Your Son, I receive daily inquiries from parents about lack of school motivation form their teen boys. Of course, I also get similar requests for help from parents of teen girls, but, perhaps because of a combination of gender imbalance on the issue and the book, the ratio is likely 4 to 1, boy to girl.

There are many root causes for lack of motivation. The book addresses some of the issues from a personality perspective. By observation, marijuana use is usually not the root cause of motivational issues but is the accelerant that transforms normal teen boys with normal teen motivational issues into serious motivational issues.

I’m a realist.  My sense of weed use in the current day is that it is as commonplace as drinking beer was back in the 80s. I realize that most social teens will occasionally “light up” and most will claim that occasional use is not a big deal.  Maybe that’s true.

But I can say with certainty that those who regularly smoke lose motivation.