“She’s gone and she is never coming back” that’s the harsh statement I heard one morning after making my way to my mailbox, three weeks after my daughter was killed by a marijuana-impaired driver. I was confronted by a neighbor who had recently lost his wife of fifty years. He thought I needed to hear the truth so I wouldn’t delude myself. It was shocking, but perhaps it was something I needed to hear. Before that, I was slowly trying to process her loss and live without her in my life. No more phone calls, no more plans, no more Jennifer to love and worry about. Even now, 9 years later, tears stream down my face as I write this.
I knew I could not let this tragedy be in vain and happen to yet another innocent person. I learned that finding a “new purpose” is the last step in the grief recovery process and that in helping others, we help ourselves. So slowly, I learned all about “today’s marijuana” and how I was going to make a difference through advocating and educating about the horrible outcomes stemming from the marijuana expansion in our country.
Jennifer’s story is amazing. She earned a lacrosse scholarship to college. She worked hard and achieved dean’s list status every semester and became a lifeguard, tutor, mentor, and coach to a high school lacrosse team. Her major was Intelligence and Analysis Research. She knew 3 languages fluently, including Arabic.
In her HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) internship she excelled. She then decided that she wanted to pursue a career in fighting illicit drugs. She accepted another position in the meantime, as the funding for HIDTA had not come through yet. One evening, shortly after graduation, she was called into work. As she was on her way, a man driving impaired and speeding through a red light (82mph) slammed directly into the side of my daughter’s car as she passed under a green light. Her car was hurled through the intersection crashing through the front of a building. She died instantly. He was uninjured. People at the scene said his eyes were glazed over and did not even realize what had happened. He was from Michigan and using medical cannabis as he drove through our state.
The sad truth is, once marijuana is more accessible through legalization, causing more people to think it is safe, those tragedies with be more frequent. There is no warning, nothing one can do to avoid it and it ends life in the blink of an eye. Jennifer never saw him coming.
Yes, it’s true, MY daughter is gone and she’s not coming back, but that doesn’t mean there are not countless other lives we can protect by stopping the train barreling our way to expand the legalization of marijuana. We need to hold our politicians accountable and pass laws that protect our children, not sacrifice them on the cannabis altar.
We encourage all Ohio citizens to reach out to their state legislators and make their opinion known. Visit our Resources for Prevention Advocacy page on our website
for tools and tips.
