possession of marijuana California state board of nursing?

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I have a question as what to divulge to the CA state board of nursing regarding criminal history. And what seems to be a logistical nightmare to obtain "official" court documents and law informant records, I cannot get a hold of anyone to track down these.

I was placed on a 12 month probation and paid a $1000.00 fine for a "simple possession of a controlled substance"(marijuana) 10 years ago. This was in the state of Utah, on BLM land, so it wound up in The united states district court, district of Utah.

No judgment of conviction was entered. My final court papers state "Order of Discharge and Dismissal" and "IT IS ORDERED that pursuant to the court, without entry of judgment, hereby discharges the defendant from probation and dismisses those proceedings for which probation had been ordered". I was given a "plea in abeyance" option initially in court instead of conviction and the initial charge was "simple possession of a controlled substance".

Great, it happened. Since I've been nationally licensed multiple times for multiple EMS certifications/license, and have held a nursing license in 4 different states and worked in many different hospitals. I have never had any restrictions against any license or certifications before. I ALSO have never been required to divulge this due to verbiage and lack of any conviction. I have worked for a sheriffs department in that very state of the offence after the fact, with out any issue of this! Hell, I've never even had a speeding ticket!

This has never come up on any background check before, ever. Do I report it? Per the verbiage of CA's website filled with broken links to "articles" "penal" codes and the 1 in 1000 chance of getting to talk to an actual person at the board via phone, I don't believe I do but... ? Plus, you can walk into a store in CA and buy marijuana recreationally! Does this even matter anymore?

Also, if ANYONE from the California State Board of Nursing is reading this, please, please, please answer my question! Please!

I'm looking for actual, experienced advice or information.

Thanks!

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Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.

Moved to our Criminal History forum: https://allnurses.com/nursing-licensure-criminal/

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I would think a lawyer would be best to talk to, as they can explain what plea in abeyance" is more fully and also help porifice the language in the BONs questions to determine if there is overlap.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
Plus, you can walk into a store in CA and buy marijuana recreationally! Does this even matter anymore?

It still does. Just because you can purchase MJ readily in CA doesn't mean that the BRN approves of it. And it still remains Schedule I, with no valid medical use...as far as Federal law is concerned, anyway.

If you want the CA BRN to respond to you, the best way to get that is to contact the CA BRN directly, by phone or e-mail. If someone from the BRN was here reading and chose to reply, I doubt that they would disclose that they were a BRN member. And I wouldn't consider what they posted here as being an official BRN statement, but more like their personal opinion and your mileage may vary.

When you contact the BRN, be prepared to hear, "we can't tell you for certain until you actually apply" or thereabouts, because they want applicants to submit all related documentation (i.e., actually apply) so they can evaluate them and make a decision. But you could get some insights from them so it couldn't hurt to try.

I've had luck contacting them by e-mail, and they were pretty fast regarding response time.

Best of luck.

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