Even though medical marijuana is being legalized all over the country that hasn’t changed that even medically, marijuana being around children can have parents watching their kids be taken away by child protective services. Because of this law makers are taking another look at just what puts a child in danger. If a parent is using marijuana medicinally, does that put their child at risk? Find out more after the jump!
I see it like this, just like you should be keeping your prescription drugs away from your children at all times, medical marijuana should be treated the same. Has a parent ever had to suffer the pain of getting their child taken away for having a prescription of Vicodin in their medicine cabinet? No, of course not, as long as they were responsible enough to make sure the child never laid a hand on it.
Rob Corry, a Denver lawyer who helped Colorado’s 2012 campaign to legalize recreational marijuana, sees it kind of similarly. He believes that the main point of the recreational effort was to treat pot like alcohol.
“Think of brewing beer. You’ve got a constitutional right to do it. There’s nothing wrong with it. Marijuana should be just as simple — you just keep it on a high shelf, right next to your vodka. But in practice, this is not how law enforcement treats marijuana,” he said.
Maria Green, a mother from Lansing, Michigan can attest just how much the standards of child endangerment need to be reviewed when it comes to medical marijuana. Green grows marijuana to treat her husband’s epilepsy and despite the fact that Michigan’s medical marijuana laws prevent parents from being denied custody or visitation with a child for possessing the medicine, a dispute with her ex-husband and her daughter’s father caused her to lose her daughter for three months last year.
“I never in a million years thought that they were going to take my daughter,” she said. “I know that there’s a place for child protection, but I would love to see it used to protect kids from being actually hurt.”
As of right now, in the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, Colorado law treats marijuana like heroin and other Schedule I substances as they are under federal law and weed can not legally be in a home where a child resides due to drug endangerment. It seems pretty crazy considering that some hemp medicines like Charlottes Web have proven to help children with medical issues like epilepsy.
While two Democratic lawmakers tried to update the Colorado law to say that the marijuana must also be shown to be a harm or risk to the child to actually constitute abuse, the effort was abondoned as too complicated by fellow lawmakers.
This is a growing dilemma and is sure to see more attention in the future as acceptance of marijuana use for medicinal purpose increases. What do you think? Should medical marijuana be allowed in the same home as children? Should parents be trusted with the responsibility of keeping their children out of harms way? Let us know!
Source: ABC News
