I'm a 30-ish-year-old female from Australia and I recently traveled overseas, including a week in the States—specifically Colorado. I basically spent the whole week high as shit on weed and didn't do much besides watch TV and eat. I'm now going to visit my folks and extended family for a few days, and no doubt they'll ask me about what I got up to. I've mostly changed the subject when they've asked up 'til now, but I can't really do that for much longer.

I've never talked about drugs with my parents so I'm not sure what they'd think. I have to imagine that they would know that recreational marijuana is legal in Colorado though. I think my mum would be okay with it but my dad is a bit more conservative, and I really don't know what my extended family would think. I'm not a great liar but I'm not sure how else to handle it. However, if I omit the weed of it all, since I didn't do much else I don't really have anything else to say.

I know it's just weed, but it still isn't legal here. I can also see admitting to using weed would open up a whole other can of worms because I'm pretty confident that my parent would therefore (correctly) assume that I use other drugs too. Any suggestions?

Paranoid Over Truth

Welcome to the United States of Cannabis, POT.

There are currently only eight states in our union, plus the District of Columbia, but as Business Insider points out, POT, one in five Americans now live in states with legal recreational weed. And those of us who live in states with legal weed-for-fun are making an effort to smoke/eat/lube enough weed to get more states to join us. If we can show there's a huge demand for legal weed, other states are gonna look at our legal weed markets and the tax revenues they generate and ask to join. That's how gambling spread from one state to thirty in a few decades. (In its first week of legalization, Nevada has almost run out of weed—good job, gang!)

A disclaimer for readers who don't smoke weed and/or aren't lucky enough to live in a state with legal weed: You can be high—legally high—without sinking into a couch, ordering in a pizza (or three), and wasting your entire night/free time/vacation that way. Some people get high and go for hikes. (Or some I'm told.) Some people get high to lessen social anxiety, which helps them leave the house/hotel room. And weed is aphrodisiac for others. Screw slurping oysters. Suck down one these instead.

Regarding your parents, POT, you should lie. Why? Because you're an adult and you're entitled to privacy. Because you aren't under oath when you shoot the shit with your parents. (Not you, Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared, Eric, and the other one.) Because adult children are free to run their parents on a need-to-know basis. Do your parents need to know you were high the entire time you were in Colorado? No, POT, they don't—not anymore than a kinkster's mom needs to know she spent the weekend flogging subs at a play party. (This need-to-know stuff goes both ways. Do adult children need to know their parents spent the weekend at a swingers retreat? No, they do not.)

You're not obligated to discuss your drug use with your parents. You don't have a problem. You don't need help. It's not a big deal. What if your parents ask you if you smoke pot? Then you should tell them the truth—to fight the silly stigma about pot, which is less harmful and less addictive than alcohol. Pot smokers, like cocksuckers, should be out to their families because that brand of openness changes attitudes. So even if they never get around to asking, POT, find the right moment to tell them.

And if your parents freak out, POT, tell them legal weed isn't killing Australians who visit the United States. Street criminals with guns are. Bored teenagers with guns are. Bad cops with guns are.

Weed isn't the problem here. Guns are.