by John Leland

About the author: John Leland is a senior writer at Newsweek.

Like a lot of people her age Elizabeth Russell, forty-two, figures she got into drugs when the getting was good. She was young, she was curious and the hippies still wore flowers in their hair. When grown-ups tried to caution her about the dangers of drugs, she remembers, “I thought it was a joke—reefer madness. We laughed our heads off about it. We knew different.”

Concerns of Parents

These days, as the mother of a thirteen-year-old son, Russell no longer finds the cautionary huffing so funny. A self-employed businesswoman in the San Francisco Bay Area, she avoids even the occasional puff of pot. “Now I just eat,” she laughs. And though she...