I thought society had dispensed with this disturbing and draconian issue long ago. But new moms who eat poppy seeds are still being ‘busted’ by well-meaning but blindered child welfare workers who still take away their newborns!
Smith hugs her child Julian, who is now 3 years old, in their home in Tobyhanna,
Pennsylvania. She was also a victim of the poppyseed ‘trap’.
Child welfare workers just don’t get it. And I can’t understand why! The issue has generated enough ‘press’ over the past few years to fill a book. Hut the zero-tolerance do-gooders are still seizing newborn babies from moms who test positive for drugs simply after eating foods containing poppy seeds…
Here at the FFB, we’ve reported more than one such incident. And recently, we reported that Trader Joe’s enormously popular Everything Seasoning blend (which contains poppy seeds) has been banned in South Korea, where they have a national zero-tolerance policy for opiates.
Ridiculous but true
Here’s what happens: A mom eats a poppyseed bagel or, as in the latest case, a salad garnished with poppy seeds, hours before rushing to the delivery room. But after it’s all over, the real drama begins.
In most US jurisdictions, it’s a mandatory for every mew mom’s urine to be test for illegal drugs. If the test is positive, their baby is immediately taken away and placed in custody of the local child welfare system. And the mom has to prove she’s not a junky to get her baby back. That’s not an easy thing – especially if the ‘authorities’ involve are hard-headed types who prefer a zero tolerance approach to ‘enforcement’.
What happened this time
Susan Horton had a a salad from Costco for her final meal before going to Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, CA, to give birth in August, 2022. Already experiencing initial contractions, she consumed a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing.
She didn’t know she would be drug tested, much less that poppy seeds in the salad dressing could trigger a positive result. And those tests have been proven notorious for producing false positives.
Hard to stop
“It’s almost like a gut punch. You come to the hospital and you see a social work note on your patient’s chart,” said Dr. Yashica Robinson, an OB/GYN in Huntsville, Alabama, who has tried and failed several times to halt child welfare reports and investigations of patients with false positive results. “Once that ball is rolling, it’s hard to stop it.”
And it’s not only new moms who are being unjustly slammed by the poppy seed ‘trap’.
The US Defense Department has warned if thousands of members not to eat poppy seeds at all. Armed forces members are routinely subjected to mandatory drug tests. Makes sense if you’re operating billion-dollar F-35 fighter jets or handling high explosives. But…
In addition, many private organizations – not the least of which include pro sports teams and olympic organizations – require their members to test regularly for an array of drugs from opiates to steroids.
Enter, The Marshall Project
The Marshall Project (TMP) describes itself in its Mission Statement as, “a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system.”
One of it’s chief thrusts is exposing the injustice posed by false positives from poppy seed bagels, decongestants and Zantac. The Susan Horton story triggered a massive Marshall Project investigation that resulted in widespread media coverage.
The Project speaks
Federal and state laws make drug testing of new moms mandatory. And simple urine tests are usually employed.
The problem, TMP points out, is, “urine drug screens are easily misinterpreted and often wrong, with false positive rates as high as 50%, according to some studies,”
“Without confirmation testing and additional review, false positive results can lead hospitals to wrongly accuse parents of illicit drug use and report babies to child welfare agencies — which may separate newborns from their families,” TMP warns.
And I think we all know how important it is for new moms to bond with their babies in the crucial hours and days following birth.
A shocking justice
TMP’s feature article on the Horton case notes, “At least 27 states explicitly require hospitals to alert child welfare agencies after a positive screen or potential exposure. […] But not a single state requires hospitals to confirm test results before reporting them. At least 25 states do not require child welfare workers to confirm positive test results, either.”
Which is exactly what happened to Susan Horton.
“It’s unclear how many of the [US’s] 3.6 million births every year involve drug testing,” TMP says. But… “The Marshall Project interviewed dozens of patients, medical providers, toxicologists and other experts, and collected information on more than 50 mothers in 22 states who faced reports and investigations over positive drug tests that were likely wrong.”
My take
This is utter madness.
Moms, kids and their entire families are still being traumatized by the wave of post-partum urine-test false positives across the US. Are the ‘authorities’ just too lazy to confirm positive results? Or do they just not care about the damage their precipitous actions does to their ‘targets’?
Why haven’t state and federal laws been updated to include mandatory confirmation testing when positive test results pop up? It makes perfect sense, and it’s the only fair and just thing to do.
~ Maggie J.