Josh’s Story
Shouting out our Canna-Dads Sam Hernandez [@sam.can.do]
We want to share a more serious story today, one that we had planned to send out for the theme of Father's Day but are sharing it a bit later because its tone isn't at all celebratory. At Moonstone Botanicals, we are passionate about cannabis for various reasons, and one of them is shedding light on the harmful consequences of cannabis legislation and the responses it elicits. In this edition of our Zine, Josh bravely opens up about an incredibly challenging and genuine experience he faced involving CPS and cannabis.
Cannabis and CPS Josh Pinkerton (@herenowforeverjosh)
Hey readers, thanks for being a part of our story with us while we launch our magazine and "blaze" into the future of Moonstone Botanicals. Today I would like to depart from my series on the methods of consuming cannabis and talk about something that happened to me as a father. I want to warn you now, that this story involves some difficult subject matter involving child protective services and some allegations that I faced, but at no point is anyone dealt physical harm. It has been a handful of years now and I am ready to share what happened on a (slightly) larger stage, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. I will be as honest as I can be while protecting the identities and information of the other parties involved in this story.
In 2018, a person in my immediate family confided in a Christian counselor about our use of cannabis. One seemingly normal day, I dropped my son off with my former partner and then went to work, unaware that all of our lives would be changing very soon.
A day later, I was taking my lunch break at work, and I had just ordered a slice of pizza from the pizza bar at a local deli. I was sitting in my car, about to take my first bite when my phone rang. It was my ex-spouse. They sounded scared, and I could immediately sense something was wrong. "I need you to come home, CPS is here and they want to take our son with them." My co-parent and I were not on the best relationship. And I feel very protective of them in this regard, but I am grateful for everything I have now, most of all for our son. I'm also grateful that we were from this moment on, a combined team - it was us versus them. We had our differences, but we would have done anything to get our son back.
I raced home and was met by a woman who represented Child Protective Services and asked me all sorts of questions about my child, including quite specifically that a box of craft supplies with safety pins was accessible. This became a deciding factor in our case. Dear reader, I've made mistakes. But when I look at the mistakes I've made, putting my son at risk by exposing him to a safety pin pales greatly in comparison to the mistake I made of admitting to a representative of the state of Texas that I smoked Cannabis. It was this simple admission, made by both my ex and I, that caused us both to be disallowed from unsupervised visitation with our son for almost 6 months. Furthermore, they searched my house and documented the silliest things.
I had a blunt Claymore sword replica from the movie Braveheart with Mel Gibson stored in my garage on a shelf about 8 feet up, and they documented it as a dangerous weapon that I kept in the house. This was only the beginning of the foolishness I experienced at the hands of the state of Texas. During this time, my co-parent and I could not be left unsupervised with our son, so my Dad, my former mother-in-law, and a close family friend underwent background checks so that they could juggle custody of our son. My dad had just retired and moved away, and for this event, he moved back. If we had not had this kind of support, our son would have gone into foster care.
For the next 9 months, I would go to a weekly 3-hour class and submit to drug tests. I was the only person in a room of about 20 other men who were there for Cannabis. In the round table discussion time, the other men would talk about how they were constantly craving pills or alcohol, many of them had multiple strikes on their records, and most of them thought I was hilarious for being there for a silly drug like cannabis, after all, they did real drugs. Having nowhere to fit in, in a community of people that have been told they don't fit in, is a strange and helpless feeling. I endured a lot of frustration at this rehab center, but possibly most frustrating was the day our instructor decided to quit, so they rolled in a TV on wheels and played the movie Good Will Hunting, which we watched entirely from start to finish, and then went home as soon as the movie ended with no discussion at all that day. There was no curriculum or training method, just discussions and storytelling, so for my last two weeks of rehab, we took turns group reading the 12 steps because they couldn't find another instructor.
After 5 months of weekly courses, I completed my rehab program, for which I was charged $240 a week. I was terrified the state would check up on me the entire time, but they never did. I drove home from rehab and smoked a blunt in my driveway that same night. I had finally run their gauntlet and only had emotional damage and lighter pocketbooks to show for it.
So why did this even happen? What was the point? Who benefitted from this experience? These are questions I ask myself all the time and I've decided there is no point, and we already know the benefit, and I have to accept that and take peace from that and move on. I'm doing much better now, I talk about it often because it's still an advocate's mission, but seeing how I've been treated, and how the system operates, it's just not for me.
I would like to thank my friends, my family, my co-parent, my dog and cat, and lastly the creator of the farming simulation game Stardew Valley for helping me get through what was the most difficult period of my life up to date.
Josh
Our heart breaks for all that have had to walk this journey without good support! We want to shout out Adam, and FCAC, for all their amazing work!
Foster Care Advocacy Center is a nonprofit multidisciplinary law office that provides holistic representation for children and parents involved in the child welfare system in the greater Houston area.
