Mother Tests Positive for Poppy Seeds, Cops Take Her Newborn Baby

With all the recent discussion of marijuana legalization, it's easy to forget how many other ways the drug war is ruining innocent lives. This disturbing story from Pennsylvania is another example of how inaccurate and irresponsible drug testing practices are creating nightmares for innocent families.

this is not a drug (photo courtesy AJU_photography via flickr.com and change.org)

The birth of a couple’s first child is supposed to be a joyous occasion -- and for the first three days, it was for Elizabeth Mort and her partner Alex Rodriguez. But then the commonwealth of Pennsylvania took their young daughter away after the hospital where she was born reported the mother for testing positive on a drug test. Her drug of choice? An "everything" bagel from Dunkin’ Donuts.

"The best thing in my life had been taken from me and there was nothing I could do to get her back," Mort says. For five excruciating days, officials with Lawrence County Children and Youth Services (LCCYS) kept mother away from child, all based on a positive drug test they didn’t even bother to investigate -- and which the hospital never even informed the mother about. Now, aided by the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the parents are fighting back with a lawsuit against both LCCYS and Jameson Hospital. [Change.org]

This isn't the first time something like this has happened, but hopefully the lawsuit will send a message to the drug war idiots who keep allowing these sorts of outrages to take place. Breaking up new families, even temporarily, is profoundly traumatic and it's intolerable that drug test results – notoriously unreliable as they are -- could ever be considered a reasonable justification for taking an action like this. That scores of innocent people would be grievously harmed by such policies is not a coincidence, it's inevitable.

The blame for this continuing fiasco rests first with hospital and law enforcement officials around the country, who continue to preside over an error-prone policy of treating mothers as drug suspects. But it doesn't stop there. The entire drug testing industry is culpable for marketing their products as a reliable indicator of drug use, such that numerous agencies see fit to administer harsh punishments based solely on drug test results. Ultimately, the drug war mentality itself, and all who promote and defend it, are responsible for the consequences of the hysteria they've fought so hard to perpetuate in our society.