When dealing with policy, marijuana and otherwise, we often hear how “we need to send a message.” When legislators thought they needed to require marijuana shops to post signs warning pregnant women about the dangers — dare I say evils? — of consuming marijuana during pregnancy and breastfeeding, I had to wonder what message that sends to case workers in our child welfare system.
In Colorado, babies are routinely tested for drugs at birth.
From the CDPHE’s Marijuana Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Guidance for Colorado Healthcare Providers:
If pregnant women report their substance use to their prenatal health care provider and/or have a positive drug test during a prenatal care visit, Colorado law prevents that information from being used in criminal prosecution. (C.R.S. § 13-25-136)
Tetrahydrocannabidol (THC), both recreational and medical, is considered a Schedule 1 drug under federal and Colorado law. (C.R.S. § 18-18-203)
Current Colorado law defines a baby testing positive at birth for a Schedule I substance (including recreational or medical THC or other drugs) as an instance of child neglect, which requires a report to social services. (C.R.S. § 19-3-102)
Please inform your patient: Marijuana is now legal for adults over 21. But this doesn’t mean it is safe for pregnant moms or babies. Some hospitals test babies after birth for drugs. If your baby tests positive for THC at birth, Colorado law says child protective services must be notified.
Despite the passage of laws allowing both medicinal use and adult recreational use of cannabis, patients and consumers still face challenges when it comes to parenting. Cannabis consumption or cultivation is routinely used as a wedge issue in child custody cases. Caring adults are kept from being foster parents, even to family members, if they consume cannabis. Parents who work in the marijuana industry are often disparaged by neighbors and other parents with comments like, “You feed your kids with drug money.” And parents of pediatric cannabis patients are often targeted by doctors, hospitals and social services, facing tougher scrutiny because of their choice to use cannabis to heal their child.
When it comes to cannabis and the child welfare system, the guidelines are murky at best. How a cannabis-consuming parent is treated depends on what county they happen to live in and what case worker is assigned. When child welfare gets involved, frightened parents just hope that they live in a more progressive county and manage to get a sympathetic case worker. Otherwise, they could be in for a very bumpy ride.
In light of the passage of Amendment 64 and Amendment 20 before it, together legalizing the medicinal and recreational use of cannabis, the laws involving cannabis consumption and children desperately need clarification and updating to reflect this change in status. The smell of marijuana is no longer an indication of illegal activity. Neither is the presence or cultivation of marijuana in the home or employment in the marijuana industry. These are all legal activities under Colorado law. Those who choose to consume cannabis, whether medicinally or recreationally, are not criminals or child abusers and should not be treated as such. Not by law enforcement. And certainly not by child welfare.
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Categories: Children, Teens & Youth, Colorado, Employment, Employment, Family & Relationships, Local Communities, Patients, Schools & Education, War on Drugs
Cannabis Patients Alliance 
Law enforcement came into my home and cleared my family of any wrongdoing, even after seeing our meager yet completely legal 12 plants grown behind two locked doors. They thanked us for following the rules and left. Then CPS came in and said you can keep your plants, or you can keep your kids, but not both. They drug tested my children and drug tested everyone in the family, even roommates unrelated to the kids. The CPS case worker demanded we prove what kind of parents we were and we had a neighborhood of supporters show up to testify for us. She still required we sign a contract that we would not be “intoxicated” around the children, even though she could not tell us what intoxicated looked like with cannabis, and she forced us, under duress of losing our children, to agree that cannabis use in the home may represent harm to the children and that one parent would always be sober. They then drug tested us all for months before releasing the case. The stress split my family in two, the innocent children who had never experienced cannabis other than their sick mother finally being able to move, were forced to go to the local jail to be drug tested with a slew of real criminals. They witnessed the stress and fear and anxiety the state caused and they no longer trust law enforcement or county employees because of it.
The cps worker insisted that the legal organic soil based grow presented a harm of “toxic fumes” to children in the entire neighborhood. And she insisted that “Larimer county department of human services does not condone or support the use of marijuana in any capacity.” The law is not only criminally vague, but it leaves room for constant abuse by government employees and parents have very little recourse to defend themselves.
Cps is one of the most corrupt and dangerous programs ever enacted and leaving the lives of families in the hands of biased uneducated county workers leaves a wake of destruction generations wide.
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That’s terrible! I wish yours was the only story like this I’ve heard, but unfortunately it happens fairly regularly. Cannabis-consuming parents, as well as parents of kids using cannabis medicinally, are regularly targeted by CPS under the auspices of saving children when what they’re really doing is disrupting loving families.
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