Many think a medical marijuana card is enough to excuse marijuana use during supervised release. There’s more to the story – just because you’re on the outside, you aren’t free from the system and its consequences.

Medical Marijuana and Supervised Release

Although marijuana is recreationally legal in several states and medically legal in even more, the federal system still views it as a Schedule I narcotic under the Controlled Substances Act. This means marijuana still illegal under federal law.

When you’re on Federal probation, the federal laws are the ones that matter. We recently had a client with Federal Prison Tips that was returned to federal prison for 24 months after failing a drug test for the presence of marijuana, despite holding a medical marijuana card in his state of residence.

Now, this was a white collar client. As many might know, those who went to federal prison on white collar charges appear to have a more difficult time on supervised release than those with drug charges.

However, there are some instances where people on supervised release can legally hold, and use, their medical marijuana card. This is where the discretion of your judge and probation officer comes in.

If you have a serious medical need that requires marijuana as treatment, present the medical records, including a doctor’s order, to your probation officer. The medical records are the most important part. Judges know that, in most places, you can simply walk into a medical marijuana clinic, mention you have back pain, and walk away with a prescription. They aren’t stupid.

Present real medical records to your probation officer, and they can send a request for modification to the court. Alternatively, if your probation officer is uncooperative or declines to help you, you can hire a lawyer to present the same argument and records to the court for a motion for modification, or hire a prison consultancy to help you craft the same argument for you to file pro se.

Every case is different, but we do have clients with drug charges who have failed drug tests several times. They generally go through sobriety programs or get a written reprimand. Then, we have our example, who had white collar charges and went back to prison for 24 months. It seems that white collar criminals are treated more harshly for these violations – but, again, every case is different.

You can’t be too careful. When your sentence of supervised release is so close to concluding, do the right thing and talk to your probation officer if you truly have a medical need. Your forthrightness about the issue will help you establish a genuine rapport, which will eventually contribute to their recommendation to the judge to let you off early.