MN mom facing charges for treating son’s chronic pain in CO with medical marijuana

A Minnesota mother was charged with two misdemeanors after giving her teenage son medicinal marijuana to help alleviate pain from a traumatic brain injury.

Angela Brown said an acquaintance apparently reported her to family services after taking her 15-year-old son, Trey, to Boulder, Colorado, in the spring to buy medical marijuana oil, reported KARE-TV.

“Everything was great until I opened my mouth to the wrong person and I got turned in, and family services questioned my son at school, the cops came to my workplace," Brown said.

Trey was struck in the temple by a line drive while pitching in a baseball game three years ago, and his mother said the teen has harmed himself and contemplated suicide due to severe pain.

An emergency room physician recommended the family trying medical marijuana, and Brown said the drug worked exactly as she had hoped.

"Trey would describe it as reducing the pressure in his head,” she said. “He didn't have the pressure anymore and his muscles would calm down.”

Family services eventually dropped the case after talking to Brown and her husband, but the Lac Qui Parle County attorney decided to criminally charge her.

“I guess their definition of a good mom would have been a mom who sat back, let the doctors do whatever, and possibly let their child die," Brown said. "I guess a bad a mom chooses to go find answers for her child and chooses to treat her child and takes his pain away, so if they want to call me a bad mom, then fine."

Medical marijuana will be legal in Minnesota starting next July, and pro-pot advocates say they were “stunned” by the child endangerment charges filed against Brown.

“I can't think of an instance where an individual has been brought up on charges like this simply because the effective date hasn't come around yet for the law that has already been passed,” said Bob Capecchi, of the Marijuana Policy Project. “Let's not forget -- there is a medical marijuana law that has been endorsed by the legislature and by the governor."

Capecchi said prosecutors have discretion over bringing charges in individual cases, and he said Brown’s case seems “tailor-made” to have the charges dropped.

The family has asked Gov. Mark Dayton for help, but they have not heard from him, and Brown said she and her family may move to Colorado after her court appearance in late September.

Watch this video report posted online by KARE-TV: