Baby Bree’s drug test returns a positive result for marijuana; at 0.3 picograms, test could be “a false positive,” says attorney
LANSING- on Friday, Steve and Maria Green were back in court to secure the return of their infant child Brielle from Child Protective Services. Known as Baby Bree, the little girl was removed from the Green home for reasons related to her parent’s registered participation in Michigan’s medical marijuana program. Baby Bree’s drug test has come back positive for trace elements of cannabis in her hair follicle, and her return to the parents that love her just became much more complicated.
The decision by Judge Richard Garcia was reported in the Lansing City Pulse. Earlier in the week, Oakland County Judge Bowman dismissed all charges against Steve and Maria for their cultivation of cannabis based on Steve’s indisputable evidence of his ongoing struggle with epilepsy and other illnesses. Since most of the Lansing-based CPS case against them was predicated on the felony charges of manufacturing marijuana from Oakland County, the Greens were optimistic that their custody fight would be over soon.
“We were ready for a jury trial on Monday so that we can get our baby back and they just played more games,” Steve Green told the City Pulse. “We are very disappointed.”
Through their attorney, Joshua Covert, the Greens announced that they would seek their own drug test on Baby Bree. He added that the Greens were confident they had not smoked around their child and that machine errors in a sample that small could result in a false reading of positive.
The Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office will call expert witnesses in the October 28th trial, and they will “add the test results to the allegations against the Greens,” per the City Pulse.
The results show 0.3 picograms of cannabis in Bree’s hair follicle. A picogram is one trillionth of a gram. One red blood cell weighs 27 picograms. Numerically, this represents as:
0.000000000000003 kg
Websites from drug testing companies claim the minimum threshold at which they can detect THC is 0.3 picograms, and they normally do not report results under 1 picogram. THC metabolites, called THC-COOH, can be detected at 0.1 picogram in hair follicles.
Drivers in Washington State have a 5 nanogram/ml standard for driving impairment. In Colorado, a 5 nanogram/ml permissible inference limit is the law. If correct, Baby Bree’s test reveals a 0.0003 nanogram test result.
The presence of any amount of a Schedule 1 substance in a child is sufficient to trigger certain actions by Child Protective Services.
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Source: The Compassion Chronicles
