Oddly enough, DaRonco said it doesn’t actually matter if you have a card - only if you admit to using cannabis. Would any of them make decent foster parents for the nearly 18,000 kids in foster care in Arizona? However, Arizona has more than 132,000 medical marijuana patients, the majority being older than 30. “ are you ready to go through a six-month process for nothing? Are you going to go through 30 hours of pre-service training, another three hours of additional training, invest all this time and energy, when you know it’s not going to be accepted? And when we present it that way to folks in this situation, they’re opting out.”ĭata on this sort of thing is not kept, so it’s not easy to find numbers on the exact amount of medical marijuana-related application dropouts. “We have not submitted a study for a family who’s had a medical marijuana card in quite some time,” Funk said. But once AASK began letting potential parents know in advance about this policy, they noticed many with medical marijuana cards stopped moving forward with the process altogether. Russ Funk, Director of Community Engagement for Aid to Adoption of Special Kids (AASK), said his agency began seeing medical marijuana-related rejections when the policy was first implemented around 2012. But potential foster parents with medical marijuana cards don’t even get to the rejection stage because once they learn of the policy, they often stop their application process. The number of families rejected for this reason is “extremely rare,” according to Darren DaRonco, the public information officer for DCS. This stipulation only applies to licensed foster parents - unlicensed parents have no card exemptions. “Congress itself has specified that the CSA does not expressly preempt state drug laws,” the state Supreme Court wrote in a 2015 ruling. Still, Arizona won’t license any foster parents who use medical marijuana, even though it is essentially a prescription and in spite of numerous Arizona court rulings that say the state’s medical marijuana program does not conflict with federal law. This theory is not shared by the 29 states that have enacted MMJ programs since 1996. The state’s reasoning is that cannabis is still considered a Schedule I drug under federal law, meaning the feds don’t recognize any medical value and claim cannabis has a high potential for abuse. But it’s an indicator of some of the barriers many hopeful foster parents may face. Both cannabinoids are medicinal, but because CBD is also found in hemp, it is legal in most states and is available over-the-counter, including at Target.įollowing a story in the New Times and some back-and-forth with her licensing agency, Masterson was able to reverse DCS’ decision by explaining that CBD is non-psychoactive. THC is responsible for the “high” most commonly associated with marijuana, while CBD couldn’t give you a buzz if you wanted it to. The two main extracts from cannabis are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and CBD. “I have no alcohol in my house, but they did not ask about that,” Masterson said. After exhausting all other pharmaceutical options, she discovered cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive extract of marijuana, which she says has drastically reduced her son’s spasms. Masterson obtained a medical marijuana caregiver card to treat her adopted 12-year-old son’s muscle spasms. Becoming licensed would help her pay for groceries, clothes and start a savings account for the teenager.īut when Masterson applied to become Johnny’s foster mom, she was rejected by the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) for admitting to having a medical marijuana card. Earlier this month, the Phoenix lawyer took in 16-year-old Johnny*, who she met while volunteering. Rebecca Masterson wanted to become a licensed foster mom.
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