Prom night is as American as apple pie. But, as it tuns out, only if you can pass the smell test. And we're not talking about vodka here.
One Brighton High School couple's prom evening was ruined Saturday when administrators refused to allow them into the dance, claiming that 18-year-old senior Sarah Heideman and her date, 20-year-old Jason Schweinsberg, smelled like marijuana.
Here's the catch: he can legally smoke marijuana as a card-carrying patient on the state's medical marijuana registry. She, meanwhile, says she doesn't smoke. Post-prom urinalysis tests confirmed that she had no pot in her system; pat-down and vehicle searches found no evidence of marijuana.
Schweinsberg admits he smoked marijuana earlier in the day but that it had been several hours. He showed off-duty police officers present at the prom his medical marijuana registry card, but was still excluded from entering. He says he uses medical marijuana to help alleviate chronic pain caused by a car accident and spinal meningitis.
At a Wednesday press conference, Heideman, Schweinsberg, and their attorney, Robert J. Corry, Jr., drew all four major Denver broadcast news stations. "How do you put a price on missing out on on one of youth's greatest rights of passage?" asked Corry, a defense attorney specializing in drug cases. "It's time for Brighton High School to go back to school and learn about civil rights. If I smell anything here, it's a civil rights violation."
News of the dust up also quickly hit the blogosphere, where Westword's Michael Roberts opined that it was "hard to ignore [Corry's] press release with this headline: 'Brighton High School Senior Excluded From Prom Because Her Date Smelled Like Medical Marijuana."
A teary-eyed Heideman told reporters she just wishes she could have her senior prom back. She is seeking an apology from school officials, as well as reimbursement for the nearly $500 she and Schweinsberg forked out in preparing for the night. School officials have publicly said that they haven't made any decisions, and maintain that the decision to exclude the couple was actually made by Denver police.