At a press conference this week, Mayor de Blasio said, “We will do everything we can to stop the federal government from separating parents from their children.”
But the city itself is needlessly splitting up New York families through the Administration for Children’s Services. I know because my own family is at risk.
Ironically, the mayor made his statement at a press conference in which he announced a new policy to reduce marijuana arrests. I myself have had my life upended by senseless marijuana enforcement. And the mayor’s new policy will do nothing to help people like me — because it is ACS, not the NYPD, that is targeting me.
I am a 28-year-old loving mother and a taxpaying citizen. I have a beautiful 7-year-old daughter in a gifted and talented program and two beautiful twin baby boys. I would do anything for my children.
Unfortunately, during my pregnancy with the twins, I suffered from extreme morning sickness and could not keep food or water down. I sought the best medical care, and my doctors told me I needed to gain weight for the health of my babies.
But the medicine they prescribed didn’t work. Nothing did, until I tried cannabis.
Making sure to tell my doctor everything, I disclosed that I smoked cannabis and it helped me eat normally. That’s when I became a victim of circumstance. When my children were born, they tested negative for marijuana. But still the hospital called ACS.
I made clear to ACS that I had to use marijuana under unique circumstances — but that I would not continue to use it. I asked to schedule a drug test to prove that it would no longer be in my system.
They made me go to court or face the loss all three of my children. Then, instead of ongoing drug-testing, I was compelled to go to an outpatient rehab program three days a week for an addiction I don’t have.
Now, I have complete strangers from ACS coming into my home and telling me what to do as a parent.
Unless I am able to win my case in Family Court and get my record sealed at a later hearing, I will be blacklisted for alleged child neglect — and unable to get any job near children until my twins turn 28.
Even as the state appears to be moving toward full marijuana legalization, most of the other parents in my rehab program are women and men of color who were sent there by ACS due to marijuana use.
People call mass incarceration the New Jim Crow. As a black woman, I am living the New Jane Crow.
Before ACS got involved, the father of all three of my children and I were doing well and planning to get married. Then, ACS scared him away, accusing him of neglecting our children by smoking marijuana while our daughter was home.
Now he is out of contact. He was my support and they ruined that.
Whatever you believe about cannabis consumption while pregnant, you should know that middle-class white mothers join in Facebook groups crowing about the benefits of marijuana, and they never seem to be investigated by ACS.
I am the face of another reality. While we fight to legalize this drug, we have lots of urgent work to do to unravel the many pernicious consequences of prohibition at the local level. That includes punishing parents simply for marijuana use.
Kennedy lives in Brooklyn.
