She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby.
Pregnant with her fifth child, Susan Horton had a lot of confidence in her parenting abilities. Then she ate a salad from Costco: an \u201ceverything\u201d chopped salad kit with poppy seeds. When she went to the hospital to give birth the next day, she tested positive for opiates. Horton told doctors that it must have been the poppy seeds, but she couldn\u2019t convince them it was true. She was reported to child welfare authorities, and a judge removed Horton\u2019s newborn from her care.\xa0
\u201cThey had a singular piece of evidence,\u201d Horton said, \u201cand it was wrong.\u201d
Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. People taking over-the-counter cold medicine or prescribed medications can test positive for methamphetamine or opiates.
This week on Reveal, our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate drug test results. Reporter Shoshana Walter digs into the cases of women who were separated from their babies after a pee-in-a-cup drug test triggered a cascade of events they couldn\u2019t control.
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