Schools start to grapple with medical marijuana use by students as policy lags behind acceptance

After many years of trying to keep marijuana out of schools, educators across the nation are now grappling with how to administer legal cannabis to their students that have prescriptions for it. While this is a hard concept to grasp for a lot of people, it is necessary for students with severe illnesses to function properly in their everyday classrooms. Currently, the state of Colorado permits parents or legal guardians to come on school grounds to provide their child with their medicine. Not far behind is city in Maine who is now allowing the same thing. This decision came shortly after a New Jersey school became the first in the country to allow medical marijuana to be administered by a school nurse to a student suffering from potentially life threatening epileptic seizures. While this is the first school to do so, we are hoping for more reform in the school systems in the near future so that students can have the same learning opportunities as everyone else.

"School districts are trying to find their way and navigate this landscape as laws develop and social norms change," said Francisco Negron, general counsel of the National School Boards Association. "This is a situation in which the changing social norms are ahead of the existing operational structure."