Deal Struck Allowing Girl To Take Prescribed Cannabis At School
(CBS) – There is a compromise, for now, in an 11-year-old's battle to take marijuana products to her school.
Illinois state law allows the medically prescribed use of marijuana, but not on school grounds.
Maureen Surin's daughter, Ashley, suffers from seizures that are the complications of her leukemia treatment.
"Her brain used to be in a cloud," Surin tells reporters.
Clarity – and fewer seizures -- came in December, from medical marijuana patches and cannabis drops.
"It's not a drug, it's a medicine," Surin says of the products.
But the Hanover Highlands sixth-grader can't legally take her prescription on school grounds. That's what led to this week's lawsuit against Illinois and Schaumburg District 54.
School nurses feared they'd lose their licenses or even be arrested helping Ashley with the technically illicit drug.
But a compromise was sketched out in court Friday.
"The attorney general's office said, effectively, they are not going to enforce the ordinance," family attorney Steve Glink said.
Darcy Kriha, the attorney for School District 54, says that satisfies the district.
Now, the pre-teen can return to school after weeks away. A larger legal battle still looms in Springfield.
"The law hasn't caught up with the medicine," Ashley's mother says.
The Surin family says they may need to take their fight to the federal level because current law doesn't allow their daughter to travel to several states with her medication.
Parties in the current lawsuit were expected to meet in court next week.
