TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – A new school year brings new challenges; one of them is how to deal with students who may have been prescribed medical marijuana.
Ten months ago, 71 percent of Florida’s voters voted yes on Amendment 2. Gov. Rick Scott signed the legislation June 23. But Florida’s 67 school districts still haven’t decided how to store or administer the drug to prescribed students.
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“There's 67 districts in the state of Florida and we're all 67 facing this right now," Leon County Schools Assistant Superintendent Alan Cox said. "The federal government doesn't recognize it. They say it's against the law."
Andrea Messina, the president of the Florida School Boards Association, said districts are working on plans, but a lack of guidance from the state Department of Education is complicating things.
"They're kind of doing it on a one-off now, to try to accommodate the needs of individual students, because they don't, right now, have large numbers, and they're trying to find a way to make it work for the family and for the school and for the school community," Messina said.
The Leon County School District said, for the time being, it won't allow school nurses to administer the medication or hold medical marijuana in schools until it gets more guidance from the state and the DOE. That doesn’t mean prescribed students will be out of luck though.
“We will ask the parent to give it before school, after school or feel free to come to the school to administer it,” Cox said.
The challenge isn’t only figuring out how to deal with students with prescriptions, but also teachers.
“If someone's judgment is impaired, typically, school districts would have a policy related to that, because we can't have adults who have an impaired judgment around children," Messina said.
Messina said marijuana will likely have similar rules as other prescription drugs, such as opioids, that have the potential to cause inebriated states.
Education officials said they estimate it will still be months before any policies are finalized.
As of last Friday, the state Department of Health reported there are 26,968 medical marijuana patients in the state.