“We moved here across the country so we wouldn’t be criminals. But all it takes is one neighbor not approving of what we’re doing, one police officer who doesn’t understand, and the law says I’m a child abuser,” Barnhart said.
“There are people who are very reckless with what they’re doing, leaving marijuana brownies on the coffee table or doing hash oil extraction that might blow the place up. Too often with law enforcement, they’re just looking at the legality of the behavior and not how it is affecting the children,” said Jim Gerhardt of the Colorado Drug Investigators Association, which supported the bill.
Colorado courts are wading into the question of when adult marijuana use endangers kids. The state Court of Appeals in 2010 sided with a marijuana-using dad who lost visitation rights though he never used the drug around his daughter. The court reversed a county court’s decision that the father couldn’t have unsupervised visitation until passing a drug test, saying that a parent’s marijuana use when away from his or her children doesn’t suggest any risk of child harm. This could hit us soon. The Florida Right to Medical Marijuana Initiative, Amendment 2 is on the November 4, 2014 ballot in the state of Florida as an initiated constitutional amendment.