By way of Burnt Orange Report, we see the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has video up of the toddlers smoking weed at the behest of their older relatives. It’s not like those kids are fighting it either – it looks like shorty’s about to bogart it! Puff, puff, pass!
Seriously though, the video was brought to my attention via the FOX 7 “News Edge” earlier this week, which leads with an interview of one of the teens that put the joint in the kid’s face. It’s sad, and it’s wrong, hearing him mumble a barely coherent defense, before seeming to shrug the whole incident off. But it would be a mistake to blame only them. What about the people that left the kid in their care – surely they knew about their weed habit and didn’t care they were leaving the kids with them. Or the conditions of poverty and hopelessness that drove the teens to steel the camera with which they recorded the kids. It’s a breakdown at pretty much every societal level.
This article appears in March 2 • 2007.