Cannabis Prohibition Essential But Special Education Isn’t During Pandemic

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Federal laws specifically created to preserve the civil rights of America's most vulnerable citizens sidelined but the plant they need researched remains prohibited:

Parents around America are experiencing quite a bit of anxiety as they attempt to work from home, adjust schedules, and handle their kids being off of school with no place to go but online or back in front of the TV. But, for the world of special needs, mommy and daddy are it’s a whole different scenario – one in which the very laws written by our government and enacted to protect them have been literally forgotten about. “I don’t get it, why doesn’t my son have school today”, Christine Buell stated in a conversation today, “I want to take action Mike, can you file some type of complaint”? Sadly there’s no action to take as while prohibition remains intact the offices that house the civil rights division are closed essentially making the filing of any complaint pointless. There’s no way to balance these scales of injustice – while one federal mandate to protect disabled kids is pushed aside an aged one that keeps us from researching a plant they need is kept intact – the prohibition action taken by the rich to make more riches done back in 1937.

Jump forward to the pandemic of 2020 – some are calling it the plague. While we all must be mindful of the fact that the government is making moves to mitigate the death count of the Coronavirus – we also have to look at the reality of what’s happening. While one federal law matters another does not. Who gets to make these decisions and where is it within our constitution that a decision would be made to toss aside the rights of disabled children while protecting the rights of big pharma? Most of us know that our kids are likely in special education due to the ongoing protection of entities who once made cannabis tinctures and the foul nature of what they make now – narcotics and scheduled drugs with side effects that ‘may cause death’ – something cannabis doesn’t have a warning for because it does not.

Easily you could debate the efficacy of cannabis vs. pharmaceuticals if that were the wish – but this article isn’t about that. What we’re visiting is federal law and who it protects – and most important – when it protects them. There has been nothing at all, no move made by Congress nor the President that would allow for the current total and complete nod to bypass the protections afforded every single disabled child in America in regards to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. This is known as a FAPE in the LRE – or for someone such as myself it’s known as 34CFR Chapters 1-7 et al – otherwise known as one huge book of federal law that does nothing but ensure that kids with disabilities gain the education they are mandated to get and that states who have taken funds from the government assure the federal government they’ll use taxpayer funds per the law.

What’s going on instead is, to the dismay of millions of parents, literally not support as their disabled children try to fight off boredom during the day. Keep in mind there’s no online school system set up for them like there is for kids in regular ed right now with all fees waived. “It’s a blatant violation of their rights that should be addressed, but with everything that’s going on we can’t do much about it” stated a source at Disability Rights California today – wishing to remain anonymous, “You’re 100% right in that it violates the civil rights disabled kids as the law has no leeway for pandemics. We’re trying to allow some time for things to get operational before we make a move to address why this happened.”

“Why isn’t my child with special needs gaining what’s special and needed?” Stated Bonnie Parker of San Diego about the total lack of special education services at this time, “after all the term means his needs are special doesn’t it?” She went on to tell me how he’d torn the wallpaper off their apartment walls. Her son is severely autistic and has been given zero education since the shutdown – just like Genevieve and just like millions of others. I told her to head this way and get some cannabis oil – so she’s going to get his recommendation and come for a visit and bring his sister who has a home school program in place at no cost all supplied by the government – she’s not disabled.

So sadly this silent crew of kids has been written off, but only temporarily while the funds that were given to states to educate them to sit with a hush in state coffers. At the same time, parents have been offered literally zero help to establish their own home program – which is quite the task with no aides, no therapists, and no specialized educational material. It’s also a federal law and a civil right of the disabled American to have this with nothing within the law that allows it to be temporarily put on hold while another federal law isn’t.

Genevieve has had a very hard time understanding why school is out or why she can’t go anywhere

Across the nation parents of disabled kids are having a very hard time. Thankfully we have the ability to use cannabinoid medicine for Genevieve which helps a lot – but even she is having a very hard time. She doesn’t understand and simply does not want to hear about people being sick, why she can’t have the food she wants, or why she can’t go to places. Without any type of structured educational plan, no services such as speech-language, adapted PE, physical therapy, behavioral therapy, and so much more in school almost every parent I know is going through the same thing. “We’re at wit’s end, I do not know what to do with him”, Bryna Smitts told me about her son Jonothan, “He’s crawling the walls, he’s nonverbal, he’s tearing up sheets and breaking toys. I called the behavioral therapy team and I get recordings. I’m so worried that we’ll lose our son to the system over all of this. I don’t want to complain I just need help and it needs to be fast.” She’s not alone and I won’t disclose her location due to the fact that a reader could try to ‘turn her in for being a ‘bad parent’.

We live in a judgmental society that just loves to pick people apart. But, we’re in a time where we all need to help each other keep it together. If you know of someone that has a disabled child that would normally be in special education try to think of something you can do to help – anything. You may be able to provide a different activity, an idea, or even a video that will temporarily make things better. As much as we’d love to scream out that the law is being violated and the aggrieved parties are kids that can’t even speak or kids in wheelchairs – we know that nobody that can do anything will listen. The rich are bundled up in their homes hiding from a virus and worried about whether or not the next vacation can be taken and some of us feel rich just to breathe while we don’t care about a vacation and just want our child to be happy.

The bottom line of all of this is rather simple. As a nation we don’t pick and choose which federal laws will stay in place during a time of crisis, instead, ALL of them do. When we must forego obligations we have both by law and as a society – the education of a child – we must mitigate the loss of such. When it comes to kids in regular education that have already been done. Quickly parents across the nation were able to sign on and gain ‘free access to the online K-12 home school program with the costs waived due to the CV-19 pandemic which was beautiful to see. But, in that same swift moment, the leader of the free world failed to protect the civil rights of all disabled kids in special education by discriminating against them. It is federally illegal to offer something to an able-bodied citizen and not offer an equivalent to someone that’s disabled.

Did I just accuse our President and Congress of violating the IDEA, the ADA, and 504 all in one quick move? Well yes, I did, but he or they can make it up to us very quickly by ending prohibition now. It’s beyond odd that the same subset of the populace that needs cannabinoid medicine and must wait due to a very uncivil prohibition law must now also suffer due to blatant violations of known civil rights law. It’s just wrong.