Arizona Blacklisted Mom for Smoking Legal Medical Marijuana While Pregnant

It’s called the Central Registry and Lindsay R’s name will be on it for up to 25 years along with countless Arizona parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children. Her listing cost her a social work job and could prevent her from getting dozens of others.

Your offense? She took prescription medical marijuana during her pregnancy, in a state where it is legal, to counter the effects of a dangerous condition that causes excessive vomiting.

“At the beginning [I was fighting] for personal reasons: I want to keep my job; I don’t want me to have neglected him, ”Lindsay told The Daily Beast as she struggled to clear her name. “Now it’s become a fight for everyone else, so no one has to go through this shit again. Because nobody has to. “

The criminalization of drug use during pregnancy is not a new topic: the nonprofit National Advocates for Pregnant Women documented more than 1,000 arrests of women for drug use during pregnancy between 2006 and 2020, a gray area where women like Lindsay can face consequences if they encounter one Consume drug that is completely legal in your state.

The NAPW is currently investigating several cases of pregnant women being charged with using marijuana in a state where it is legal, according to executive director Lynn Paltrow.

“We are definitely seeing cases, both criminal and civil, where pregnancy is the excuse for overriding permission to access marijuana,” Paltrow said. “We don’t know at the moment whether we can speak of an increase, but we are certainly seeing too much of it.”

Lindsay told The Daily Beast that she has been using medical marijuana to treat her chronic irritable bowel syndrome since 2010 when it was legalized in Arizona. When she became pregnant in 2018, she said her OBGYN advised her to wean off it. And Lindsay tried, she says, until she developed hyperemesis gravidarum – a rare condition that causes severe nausea, vomiting, weight loss and, in extreme cases, pregnancy loss. Most days, Lindsay says, she was so sick that she struggled to keep three square meals to herself; She was taken to the emergency room twice for emergency hydration. She was afraid of miscarriage because she couldn’t feed her developing fetus. So, she says, “went to the medication that I knew would help me”.

The science of marijuana use during pregnancy is mixed. Large health organizations like the American Council of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warn you about it, said it could lead to brain dysfunction and premature birth, among other things. But a new one Review of 40 studies on this topic, it came to the conclusion that the current evidence “does not support an association between prenatal exposure to cannabis and clinically relevant cognitive deficits”. A large study of the health effects of cannabis affected by the. has been published National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in 2017 found a link between cannabis use and low birth weight, but “limited, insufficient or no evidence” for other, more serious outcomes.

However, Arizona law does not specifically prohibit pregnant women from using cannabis. When the legislature presented a corresponding law in 2016, it was shot down by local activist groups. Arizona child neglect laws also exempt newborns exposed to substances such as marijuana if the substance has been prescribed to the mother as part of medical treatment. And the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act of 2010 specifically states that the use of medical marijuana should not be viewed as evidence of child neglect unless its use poses an “unreasonable risk to the safety of the minor.”

At the time of her pregnancy, Lindsay was working in the childcare department, where she says she was trained to use medical marijuana like any other prescription drug. (DCS declined to comment on the specifics of this case.) She said she had several friends who used cannabis with no problem during their pregnancies, and that she successfully renewed her medical marijuana card even after her pregnancy was announced. (The paperwork her doctor signed during the visit confirmed that he had “addressed the potential dangers to fetuses from smoking or using marijuana while pregnant.”)

But Lindsay had a difficult delivery and her baby was admitted to the NICU for several days because of “shaking”, sore throat and bleeding in his brain. While he was there, someone ordered a substance test. It was positive for cannabis and triggered an emergency call to DCS.

Tests were also positive for Buspar, Lindsay’s prescribed anti-anxiety drug; Benadryl and caffeine. A DCS specialist tasked with reviewing the case admitted that she had not spoken to Lindsay’s doctors about whether the other substances might have caused his health problems, nor did she know the possible side effects of any of them on a fetus. The investigators found Lindsay “polite, calm and cooperative” and found that she was “expressly”[ed] Love and empathy for her child. ”Despite some disorder in her house and concerns about Lindsay’s mental health, the investigator found“ no current assessment of the impending danger ”. Both Lindsay and her husband agreed to regular drug tests, and Lindsay says she didn’t smoke three months after that.

Still, shortly after she returned from the hospital, Lindsay learned that DCS would find her case neglected based on the fact that she had “exposed the child to marijuana prenatally.” For 25 years, the department told her, she would be on their central registry – a confidential list of Arizonans known to have abused children. Listing can show up on background checks and disqualify applicants for jobs with children and vulnerable adults – the very kind of job Lindsay, a social worker, wanted to get. Additionally, DCS said Lindsay had no choice but to fire her based on the results in her case.

“That was pretty emotional dealing with it,” Lindsay recalled. “I found out that my case would be justified and then I immediately lost my job.”

In court records, DCS said that Lindsay’s obtaining a medical marijuana card was insufficient to prove the substance was medical treatment administered to her by a doctor, as required by local child abuse law. Investigators also found that Lindsay had failed to tell several of her doctors or the hospital that she was smoking weed – something Lindsay readily admits and said she was concerned about the stigma her drug use brought with it.

That’s the problem with policies punishing mothers for drug use, says Samantha Lee, a NAPW attorney: They tend to backfire. Punitive drug use policies can deter pregnant women from seeking medical help – both for themselves and their children. A Study published in February found that Tennessee’s “Fetal Hazard” Act had a “statistically significant negative impact on the health of fetuses and infants,” while a Study 2019 found that measures to discourage pregnant women from consuming alcohol actually lead to one increase with low birth weight and premature births. Threatening employment to a new mother – for example, from being entered on a child neglect register – can lead to economic instability that is well known to have negative effects on children’s health.

Cases like Lindsay’s, Lee said, “are really aggravating the harm across the board – not just for this family, but for families who see this case and are afraid to seek medical care for fear of it long-term impact on their family stability. “

That hasn’t stopped many states from punishing – and even prosecuting – mothers for using cannabis while pregnant. A 2015 investigation by ProPublica found that between 2006 and 2015, nearly 500 new and expectant mothers were prosecuted under Alabama’s “Chemical Hazards” Act; 20 percent of them had only used marijuana. The trend continues even with weed legalized: Lee said the NAWP is currently investigating several cases of mothers accused of child abuse in Oklahoma, where medical marijuana was legalized in 2018.

For women’s rights activists, the laws are not just bad health policy, but an attack on the fundamental freedoms of pregnant women. By monitoring things like legal drug use, they argue, we are making pregnant people a separate class of citizens with less autonomy over their own bodies.

“This is about the ability to make your own decisions in one of the most intimate, private moments of your life,” said Julie Gunnigle, Arizona NORML attorney who represents Lindsay on her case. “The state has criminalized so much of pregnancy and reproduction … we will likely see women imprisoned in the near future if we don’t fight back on this matter.”

Lindsay fights back in her own way by challenging the DCS decision as much as possible. An administrative judge sided with them last February but was overridden by DCS. The Arizona Supreme Court sided with the Department when Lindsay appealed the decision last year. Now, with Gunnigle’s help, she’s taking her case to the Arizona Court of Appeals – the final stop before the state’s Supreme Court.

Despite the support of the NAWP and more than 40 other medical groups, experts, and advocates, Lindsay’s case is likely to be long and grueling. A few profiled by a local Arizona newspaper spent three years and more than $ 21,000 clearing their names from the DCS registry after their baby rolled out of bed while their father fixed their bottle.

Gunnigle said she warned her client that the case would be long and tough, and that COVID-related delays would make it even longer. But Lindsay didn’t even blink.

“She just said, ‘I’m down,'” Gunnigle recalled. “‘I don’t want this to ever happen to another mom again.'”