Stupid? Sure. Abuse? Dangerous? Criminal? Hardly. (Photo by NewsChannel5.com)
(WSMV TV) NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Portland police arrested a father Monday after they discovered pictures of his 2-year-old son packaging marijuana.
Police said they were called about a domestic altercation between a husband and wife… During the investigation, officers said they found images on Christopher Bradley’s phone of his 2-year-old son standing at a table and packaging marijuana.
Other pictures showed the child placing marijuana into a jar, as well as a large amounts of marijuana, rolling papers and a lighter on a table.
Bradley, 30, is charged with child abuse, child neglect and domestic assault. He is scheduled to be in court Jan. 26.
I hate being in the position of having to defend this guy. I’m not fond of guys who get into so-called “domestic altercations” with their wives. I’m not happy about cannabis users being irresponsible and allowing their kids access to the stash. I’m disappointed every time there is a story of a cannabis consumer doing something stupid like taking photos of their kid with weed.
Child abuse? Don't be absurd. This is just a "Funny Beer Drinking Baby". Click her... there's a million or more of us!
But… child abuse? I don’t think so. That seems too severe to me. There is no report of the child being actually abused. The child didn’t eat any of the cannabis, which is about the only harm he could have possibly suffered, aside from the risk of police bursting in with no-knock warrants and automatic weapons, and even a kid eating cannabis is not going to die or suffer any lasting harm. I think child neglect is appropriate, but if we’re going to charge this guy with child abuse, then some of these kids’ parents need to be charged as well.
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“…if we’re going to charge this guy with child abuse, then some of these kids’ parents need to be charged as well.”
Agree about charging them, disagree about the charge: they should be charged with social corruption and executed (choice of hanging – expensive, or bullet to back of skull while kneeling – cheaper) at 12:00 noon every Sunday, with the executions publicly broadcast and (means tested) invoices raised to families of the deceased, to help others understand the true nature of and damage done by drugs.
Disagree about the charge of child neglect, as well: if cannabis were poisonous, e.g. like alcohol, then a serious charge might be justified. For a substance of such little potential danger the charge of child neglect isn’t really appropriate. Have you ever tried eating large quantities of raw cannabis? It’ll take you half an hour to get through a gram. Then, because it’s entering the stomach without binding to a fat, the psychosomatic effect is minimal. You’d have to leave a two-year old kid with a good, advanced set of choppers alone with the grass and nothing else to eat for a long time before s/he managed to justify a charge of child neglect due to cannabis poisoning (which doesn’t exist) for you. If you leave your kid alone unsupervised for that long, then you probably deserve it; not otherwise. Blaming cannabis for bad parenting is not constructive, because the parents may stop using cannabis as a result, but, because the real issues remain unchallenged, continue to neglect and/or abuse the child.
Clarification this is a local story and also locally recently while 2 teens were cleaning guns, one discharged and one of the teens died. No charges were filed for improperly supervising minors.. go figure
Local story, a week or so ago a teen was killed while cleaning a gun… No charges…go figure.
Bad choice on the dad’s part. I agree with you Russ,as cannabis users we must be more than responsible. This is obviously not child abuse. I would bet my house that there are many things in this mans home that could potentially kill his child,but marijuana is not one of them.
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