Now that recreational pot is legal in those two states, how does that shake out for people who live in assisted living facilities such as nursing homes or group homes (for the developmentally disabled)?
Is Shady Oaks Home going to prevent some 80-year-old hippie from firing up his vaporizer? Does the group home where a 25-year-old dude with Down syndrome, who likes to mellow out with a J after work on Friday, allow it?
I don’t think you can smoke anything inside or even near a nursing home. I am a field technician for a health services company, which means I visit a lot of nursing homes. They are all very strict about smoking on their property.
Sure, but vaporizers, edibles, tinctures…
Is it? My understanding is that it’s still very much illegal under federal law.
I’d wager that, at least for privately run homes, the service contract gives the provider the right to terminate the contract for, and then evict, anyone found to be engaging in illegal activity on the premises. Whether this would be enforced for recreational marijuana use I suppose depends on the attitude of the care provider.
It is. Marijuana won’t actually be legal in those states until and unless Federal law is changed. Right now, it’s simply not prohibited by state law.
And Federal funding might play a role in the attitude of the care provider. Many of those places rely on Medicaid (which is partially Federally funded) and allowing marijuana use may result in the facility being excluded from participation.
This silly response comes up everytime this subject is debated. It’s both. It is still illegal under Federal law, but it is legal in Colorado and Washington. I can get in my car and buy pot in a legal retail store in five minutes if I chose to. If I got caught speeding on the way home, I might get a speeding ticket, but even if my marijuana was sitting out on the passenger seat I would not get arrested or ticketed for it. I can grow up to six plants in my house or backyard without going afoul of the law.
So while technically true, it is pure pedantry and just attempts to muddy the waters. The Feds have made it clear that they will respect CO and WA’s wishes. They are working in Congress to rewrite banking laws that will allow banks to deal with marijuana retailers.
Thank you Lamar Mundane
I understand I appreciate you setting the record straight. As for nursing homes they may (or not) allow edibles and oils if prescribed by a doctor, but I don’t know of any specific instances in which they do.
We do have a large (apparently) number of people moving here because of their children and MJ oils which can help they with their seizures, etc. I don’t know how that is working out but it’s been in the papers for quite a while.
Bob
You must live in Colorado. Individuals are still barred from growing in Washington.
My father was allowed to smokes his cigars on the grounds of a nursing home. Surprised me.
A home I just checked into allows smoking on an individual’s balcony. FIL likes his cigars.
the nursing home where I work allows smoking outside, supervised, at regular times. the people who do it are mostly dying of their cigarettes but they are still allowed to smoke them.
since they are adults, after all.
The hospice my Grandad died in allowed smoking on the grounds. Some of the residents would be wheeled out there to enjoy a cigarette.
I doubt the ones with lung cancer were among them, because it would be a bit difficult to enjoy a cigarette at end-stage lung-cancer stage, just the ones with other life-ending diseases who wanted to enjoy one of life’s pleasure’s that really couldn’t harm them any more than everything else already was.
I find it amusing that, after over 50 years protesting against The Man, all the marijuana advocates in places where it’s now legal-ish are perfectly happy trusting the cops not to bust them for committing a federal crime, just because the cops promised not to.
Because of the growing popularity for legalization/decriminalization/regulation, the ramifications for law enforcement doing a U-turn on enforcement of federal laws are much higher. So it’s not so much a matter of “trust” as it is having popular (and some state) support on the side of the people who want prohibition to go away.
Are the state and local cops even allowed (under the new laws) to enforce the federal prohibition? It seems like it would be pretty simple to write the law in such a way as to prevent that.
Not all those in favor of legalizing pot have spent any time protesting against The Man. I’m pretty much The Man incarnate, and I am in favor of legalization (despite not having smoked pot in 20+ years)
I’ve spent time in nursing homes in the past, most recently in 2006, and yes, residents were permitted to light up outside in the courtyard. I’ve even seen residents who were on oxygen park their tanks just inside the door before going outside with a cigarette.
The only thing the local or state cops could do is arrest you and hand you over to the feds (although I think some of the decriminalization measures explicitly forbid it) but individual users are pretty safe simply because there isn’t really anyone to be handed over to. There isn’t really a federal agency that routinely prosecutes individual drug users.
Now, I agree that people who are opening up the pot shops are staking an awful lot on federal law enforcement continuing to look the other way. But it’s not like it all sprung up overnight-- when the policy of federal tolerance for medical marijuana was announced in the early days of the Obama administration, the dispensaries slowwwwwwly moved out of the shadows and for the most part they have demonstrated that they really are serious about leaving people alone if they’re in compliance with state law.
Here’s a question for the lawyers:
If the state legalizes something, and the Federal government states publicly that it is not planning to enforce the federal laws, but later decides to do so, would those “promises” have any standing in court?
… The same group that demands States’ Rights, is the one that wants to overturn state laws that make marijuana legal. 
As other have said, I think it depends upon the rules of the nursing home. Here in Washington, you can’t be arrested for smoking marijuana in your home. But a private business is perfectly free to fire you, or not hire you, if you have THC in your system. As a homeowner, I can bar people from being in my home if they have been smoking marijuana – or cigarettes, for that matter. So ISTM that if your contract with a nursing hime says NO SMOKING, then that means you can’t smoke marijuana. If there is no such prohibition, or if the terms don’t specifically ban ‘drug use’, then there may be a revision of the terms after the fact.
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Similarly, since the feds have said they’re not going to prosecute, does that weaken the prosecution’s case for anything else that might be brought to trial where it’s a federal crime but legal at the state level? Probably a wildly off-topic question…