Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
It was about 7 p.m. on a Monday night, and I was out at a restaurant in Manhattan having dinner with my wife and my son when a text came in that changed everything.
My son, 15, said, “Daddy, I just got a text from [a school friend].” The friend had texted my son to say that 15 minutes earlier, he’d eaten a whole bag full of gummy bears and then looked at the label and realized he had just eaten a ton of marijuana gummies. I said, wait, what? How many gummies did he eat? My son texted him my question. The kid texted back “a lot.” That’s not a number. The kid texted, “The whole bag.” Yeah, but how many were in the bag?
I was thinking maybe he was exaggerating, but my son assured me this kid wasn’t the type to do that. I said, depending on how many he ate, this could be a medical emergency. He won’t die from eating too many edibles, but he may feel really, really crappy. He may hallucinate. He may become unable to move or even talk. That stuff is about to overwhelm his consciousness and his nervous system. They kick in about an hour after you take them, and he took these edibles about 15 minutes ago, so we had about 45 minutes before all hell would break loose in this kid’s body. I was really nervous for him. It could be a heavy trip.
I told my son to tell him he’s gotta tell his parents what’s going on. This could become serious. Maybe he should go to the emergency room. My son knew telling his parents was breaking the teenager code, but he could tell from the severity of my tone that this was beyond all of that. I watched my son type “You gotta tell your parents.” A bubble appeared — the kid was typing. He said: “No, I don’t.”
I looked at my wife. We had no school directory listing other parents in the class,…
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