A BABY in Jersey was almost permanently removed from his birth parents and freed for adoption because both parents were using lawfully prescribed medicinal cannabis, a Royal Court judgment has revealed.
The Royal Court has halted the Children Minister’s bid to free the one-year-old boy for adoption – warning that adoption must be a “last resort” and that other realistic options had not yet been properly tried.
The court said it was “not satisfied that a freeing order is the appropriate outcome for the child” at this stage and ordered further assessments, questioning the way medicinal cannabis had been presented to potential UK centres.
Until then, an interim care order will remain in place, and the adoption bid has been adjourned.
At the heart of the case was the parents’ use of prescribed medicinal cannabis, taken under medical supervision for physical and mental health conditions.
A UK residential parenting assessment collapsed shortly after it began “due to concerns surrounding the parents’ use of medicinal cannabis”.
Judges noted that after the UK placement failed, the Children Minister’s focus appeared to shift towards adoption rather than reunification.
“We have a concern that once the UK placement broke down the minister’s focus was very much on adoption rather than the possibility of rehabilitation with the parents,” the judgment stated.
The Children’s Minister did not arrange for an alternative assessment following the breakdown of the UK placement in August 2024 until April 2025, the court found.
The court was clear that the parents’ medication was “prescribed, not illicit” and that, in principle, it “ought to be capable of being managed under medical supervision”.
The judges also highlighted that alternative forms of cannabis consumption – such as oils or gummies – were not properly explored when approaching UK assessment centres.
In July 2025, the minister was instructed to look again at whether a UK assessment centre would accept the parents while they continued to use prescribed medicinal cannabis, either by vaping it or by taking it in another form.
The court found that the minister used an external agency to conduct a search of 2,862 centres, “many of which were clearly not parenting assessment centres”.
“The request sent out referred only to the cannabis being taken ‘in bud form via a vape (this includes them having to grind the cannabis flower into the vape and use it)’ without suggesting the possibility of alternative methods of delivery,” the judgment said.
“The efforts made by the minister to find an alternative assessment centre willing to take the parents was, perhaps unsurprisingly, subject to some criticism by them.”
In a detailed direction, the court said future enquiries must ensure that information given to assessment centres “whilst correctly identifying the current prescription medication being taken by the parents, highlights alternative measures that may be taken to allay any concerns over the use of medicinal cannabis”.
The judgment acknowledged serious concerns about the parents’ mental health and parenting capacity, finding that the legal threshold for a care order was met because the child was “likely to suffer significant harm” without professional support.
However, it also stressed that this did not automatically justify adoption.
The court noted that society must tolerate “very diverse standards of parenting, including the eccentric, the barely adequate and the inconsistent,” and that “it is not the provenance of the state to spare children all the consequences of defective parenting”.
The judgment added: “To take a child away from birth parents who clearly love him is arguably the most significant decision that will ever be taken in relation to that child’s life.
“The parents have mental health issues that have affected their ability to care for the child but that should not in itself justify taking their child away from them.”
The court found there was still time – before the child reaches the age of two – to explore alternatives that could keep him within his birth family, provided proper support and assessment were put in place.
It ordered that efforts continue to find a suitable UK assessment placement and said that, failing that, further assessment should take place in Jersey, potentially including unsupervised contact.
