ID mom loses custody of children after giving sick daughter marijuana butter
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BOISE (KBOI) — A mother from Gooding is fighting to regain custody of her children and facing criminal charges after giving her 3-year-old daughter marijuana.
Kelsey Osborne and the Idaho Mom’s for Marijuana group rallied outside of the Department of Health and Welfare in Boise Thursday afternoon, calling for medical marijuana reform.
“Hopefully it’ll open everybody’s eyes on cannabis,” Osborne told KBOI.
The Department of Health and Welfare placed Osborne’s two children – Madyson, 3, and Ryker, 2, with her ex-husband in Jerome, leaving her with only supervised visitation rights.
“It tore me apart,” Osborne said, choking back tears. “I didn’t ever think that it would come down to this but it did.”
It all started in early October when her daughter, Madyson, was suffering from seizures and hallucinations after coming off a prescription anti-psychotic medication.
Osborne said she did what she thought was right as a mother; she made Madyson a smoothie with marijuana butter.
She has since been charged with a misdemeanor count of injury to a child. But says she will continue to protest Child Protection Services until she regains custody.
“It’s something that I’m going to fight for and I’m not going to give up until I have them back home where they have been begging me to be,” Osborne said. “I’m not going to stop. I won’t stop. If it takes me two years, then it’s going to take me two years.”
Tom Shanahan, spokesman for the Department of Health and Welfare, responded to the protesters, saying CPS simply follows the laws currently in place. At the end of the day, the department’s main concern is the safety of the children involved.
“Marijuana is illegal. Even in states that have legalized it, it is not legal to use on children,” Shanahan said.
In Idaho, medicinal marijuana is only legal for a small group of children with epilepsy. The 34 children enrolled have to go through a series of tests before getting approved, and even then it is a different form of cannabis than that of recreational marijuana, according to Shanahan.
“There’s two different kinds of substances. The one they use for epilepsy doesn’t have THC, it doesn’t appear to have any kind of brain development issues. Recreational marijuana does cause that so it’s not safe for these children.”