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NYC Pays Settlement to Mom Separated from Newborn for Cannabis Use
Cannabis legalization does not happen overnight, it happens in spurts and pieces as this story will show. Government agencies are oftentimes slow to adapt to the wide array of changes that must accompany legalization – which in this case amounted to the infliction of lifelong trauma on a mother and her newborn baby boy.
A settlement has been reached between the City of New York’s child welfare arm and a mother who had her baby taken from her just days after his birth.
According to an article in the New York Daily News, The New York Administration for Children’s Services will pay Chanetto Rivers, who says she was subjected to a drug test without her consent, a settlement of $75K plus attorney fees.
Rivers’ case first made headlines in May when the New York Times ran a story entitled “She Smoked Weed Legally, Then Gave Birth. New York Took Her Baby,” and that does indeed appear to be an apt description as Rivers gave birth to her baby boy in August of 2021, five months after New York legalized cannabis for recreational purposes.
The new laws did not stop ACS from taking custody of Rivers’ baby just two days after his birth. Rivers’ lawsuit against ACS argued that the organization’s own policy published in 2019 even before legalization forbids separating a mother and child for cannabis use alone.
“Positive marijuana toxicology of an infant or the mother at the time of birth is not sufficient, in and of itself, to support a determination that the child is maltreated, nor is such evidence alone sufficient for ACS to take protective custody of (remove) a child or file a case in Family Court,” – Excerpt taken from “ACS Policy and Practice on Cases Involving Marijuana Use by Patients.”
The Daily News article said that the whole situation began when Rivers told her doctors and nurses she had consumed cannabis at a family gathering just hours before arriving at the hospital. A drug test was allegedly taken without Rivers’ consent, the results of which came back positive for cannabis both in Rivers and her baby. Two days later, an order was issued by ACS to the hospital to retain custody of the baby and not release him to Rivers.
“Just days postpartum, [Rivers] had to travel in physical pain every day, to go to the hospital to be able to visit with her baby, because they wouldn’t let them be together,” said Niji Jain to the Imprint. Jain was lead counsel in the case and is director of the Impact Litigation Practice at Bronx Defenders.
In total the baby was separated from Rivers for one week, during the course of which she had to travel to and from the hospital so she could see the child while she was simultaneously traveling to and from court in an attempt to get a judge to intervene, which is exactly what happened. A judge granted an emergency order and Rivers regained custody of her son, only to face several more months of inquiries, home visits, drug tests and state-mandated anger management and parenting courses. RIvers’ lawsuit alleged she was singled out and discriminated against due to her race.
“I didn’t just bring this lawsuit for myself, but for every Black family that ACS has ripped apart. They know what they did was wrong and now they’re on notice,” Rivers said in a statement released through her lawyers.
A spokesperson for ACS gave a statement on the matter after the conclusion of the lawsuit, saying they evaluate each case individually but reiterating that cannabis use alone does not necessarily mean the child is being harmed.
“In all of our cases, including those with substance misuse allegations, we assess child safety on a case-by-case basis, looking at actual or potential harm to a child and the parent’s capacity to care for the child,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “State and city policy is that a parent’s use of marijuana is not in and of itself a basis for indicating a report or filing a neglect case. This means that a case should not be indicated solely because a parent is using marijuana, but instead a child protective specialist should assess the impact, if any, on the safety and well-being of the child.”
Outside of the settlement she received, Rivers’ case is not unique. Substance abuse and cannabis use are regularly used as justification to remove newborns from their mother’s custody, and a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April of this year found that Black mothers were disproportionately more likely to receive drug testing at birth than white mothers, 2.2% more likely to be exact.
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/nyc-pays-settlement-to-mom-separated-from-newborn-for-cannabis-use/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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