What would you do with these teen boys?

One of the truck drivers who services my workplace told me about what had happened to one of his colleagues who had worked for the same trucking company. I remembered this other guy because he used to service us a few years ago. You probably know that big rig drivers in the US must have a commercial driver's license (CDL), and there are strict rules for CDL holders.

The colleague's sons, aged around 14–16, had given him brownies on a Saturday. The man didn't normally drink, but that evening he did have a couple of beers to relax. He thought his buzz was from the beers. On Monday morning he went to work and his name was drawn at random for a drug test, which trucking companies are required to perform on CDL holders. He failed because he was positive for cannabis, and the company fired him that day despite his protests that he never had smoked pot.

You guessed it: his sons had made pot brownies and thought it would be a great joke to give some to dad to loosen him up. The driver told me this guy's sons thought it was a joke when dad lost his job and his CDL. The poor guy tried to fight it, but got nowhere.

There was a similar case involving a New York cop, Anthony Chiofalo, whose wife admitted to spiking his meatballs with cannabis. She had thought a positive drug test would cause the administration to force him to retire, since he had served over 20 years and had not already retired from the force as promised. A random drug test using a hair sample did catch him. He was fired and stripped of his pension and benefits despite her admission and passing a polygraph test about it. A court ruled against him, ending his fight, in 2010. So this truck driver would probably not have been able to fight his firing in court, either, based on this precedent.

If I were this dad, here's what I would do to the sons who gave me the brownies:

1. File a police report against the sons and press any applicable charges. There's plenty of proof about what happened.
2. Take any 529 account funds or other money put aside for their future university costs and use the money as needed to pay bills—and make sure these boys know that money is now gone. (The money in a 529 belongs to the person who starts the account, so the boys have no standing to sue to get that money. For those outside the US, a 529 is a uni savings account that builds money tax-free if it is used for higher education expenses.)
3. Any vehicles, video game systems, or other expensive items the boys have are taken and sold. Once again, make sure they know what happened to the items and why. As a broad rule with some exceptions, minors cannot do a lot about this because of legal parental prerogatives.
4. At age 18 and upon graduation from high school, the boys are thrown out of the house to find their own place to live—as in, they come home and find their belongings on the lawn to pack and take.

But that's me. Maybe I'm just a jerk. What would the rest of you do if your kids gave you drugs without your knowledge and you lost your job behind it?

Even without the consequences, their violation of his autonomy was seriously wrong. These sound like the kind of kids who are going to find date rape drugs hilarious in a few years.

If someone did that to me, I'd definitely go to the police. But I'm CF, so anyone doing that to me wouldn't be my responsibility.

The fact is, when he decided to have those kids, he took on the responsibility of turning them into decent adults. Quite often, the asshole doesn't fall far from the tree. He needs to be seriously introspective about what kind of people his parenting has made them, such that they thought this was acceptable and amusing. What they did was seriously wrong, and there need to be proportional consequences, but torpedoing their futures is just as useless as enabling them: it makes certain that they'll be assholes their entire lives. Given their ages, he should probably consult an expert on this, because they've had a long time to turn into little assholes, and he hasn't got much time to try to fix it.

While it's true that some people are just rotten, I think most kids who are assholes are assholes because of their upbringing, rather than an inherent incapability to respect society's rules and other people. If he's any kind of a decent parent, he doesn't get to wash his hands of them at 18 and inflict them on the world. The only way he gets to give up on them is when he's exhausted all avenues and it's clear they really are beyond help.

It's a shit job, but he choose it.

I knew a guy in Canada who had a DUI on his record and tried to get a CDL and was told that the DUI had to be 10 years ago or more. The guy gave up on being a truck driver.

The guy here in the brownie case is in a "you can't prove a negative" situation and there is nothing worse than that.

I'd buy them a one way ticket to another country where no one speaks English. The country with the worst violence at the current time. Hand them a credit card. Wait for their flight to take off and then cancel their credit card and claim it is fraud. Let them figure out how to pay for the hotel and everything else.

Then I'd move and not leave a forwarding address. Sink or swim, brats. You're on your own.

I'm sure they found it hilarious, but they basically poisoned the guy by giving him drugs without his consent. I know pot isn't dangerous, but it's still considered "bad" by most employers, hence the testing for it in the first place. He not only lost his job, but he'll probably have a hell of a time finding another one if potential future employers find out that the reason he was fired was because he failed a drug test.

I'd give their asses up for adoption. I don't give a good goddamn if they're too old to be adoptable - if they cost me my job and ruined my chances of finding a new one, well, gotta cut home expenses and the kids are the biggest home expense, so out they fucking go!

I am baaaaack!

Actually, giving any intoxicating or any foreign substance to anyone without their approval and explicit direction is considered a crime in almost every US state. Fuck the teenagers! Ship their asses off to a juvvie boot camp until they are 18 then buhbye!