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Thanks to Lex Pelger and his wonderful newsletter for spotting this
Giving birth to her fourth child in January of 2021 was life-changing, says Nicole Hamann, but not in the way she ever imagined. While still at the hospital, Hamann was informed that both she and her newborn tested positive for a trace amount of THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. [A urine test is given to mothers, which is followed up by testing the umbilical cord.] “I felt like, all of the sudden, I was a criminal,” Hamann said.
“Through all of my pregnancies, I took very good care of myself and my body. Now all of the sudden, I have these people making me feel guilt and shame and fear.”
Hamann lives in Idaho, where marijuana is illegal. But a month before giving birth, Hamann, who has no criminal record, says she accidentally ate a pot-laced brownie at a relative’s home in Oregon, where marijuana is legal. She says no one was interested in hearing her explanation of why she had THC in her system.
Child and Family Services began an investigation immediately, because in Idaho (and a number of other states), a single positive test result of THC in a newborn is considered presumptive evidence of child abuse.
“They knocked on my door, and there was an officer standing with them, a police officer,” Hamann said.
After inspecting her home and speaking with Hamann’s other children, state social workers closed her case. “I just thought, ‘OK, just tell me what I have to do so that this can all go away,'” she said. “And little did I know that it wasn’t going to just go away. This was going to haunt me for the next ten years of my life.”
Although social workers found no evidence of drug use, Hamann’s name was still placed on the agency’s child protection central registry – a list of child abusers. That means she can’t work in hospitals or daycare centers. Even volunteering at her children’s school is not allowed.
And Hamann’s name remains on that list for a period of ten years. “It hurts … it hurts,” she said. “It’s heavy. It feels like somebody placed a big boulder on my shoulder and I have to carry it around for 10 years.”
Hamann is not alone. At least a thousand new mothers in Idaho have been placed on that same registry, many for using marijuana products to relieve pain and severe nausea.
My career is “completely thrown away”
Three years ago, when Ashley McGrath was 22 and pregnant with her son, her morning sickness, she says, consumed the entire day: “Because your stomach is so hungry, but you can’t keep anything down,” she said. “It almost feels like the flu. Every home remedy I can think of – every tea, everything I’m trying – is making me more miserable. And it was getting to the point where my teeth were starting to be affected, and my throat.”
Her doctor prescribed the anti-nausea medication Zofran, but when that, too, failed to offer relief, she turned to marijuana gummies. She said she felt instant relief: “I swear, about an hour in, I was just like, I want to eat!”
McGrath, who was working in healthcare and hoped to become a nurse practitioner, was aware that some studies link marijuana use during pregnancy to lower birth weight and premature births. But, she says, her child was perfectly healthy, and not born prematurely.
Like Nicole Hamann, McGrath and her fiancé were investigated, and then cleared, by social workers. But McGrath says having her name on the child abuse registry has had devastating consequences. “My career as a healthcare worker is not just at risk; it’s completely thrown away,” she said.
Instead, McGrath says, she has been sentenced to a decade of scrounging for work that doesn’t require a background check. She now ekes out a living delivering food orders.
“It makes me feel like I am very closely associated with what a felon would be going through,” she said.
“To be depicted as a bad parent … is horrible”
Attorney Rick Hearn, who also has a medical degree, has filed a federal class action suit against the state of Idaho on behalf of these mothers, arguing that they’ve lost the ability to support their families without due process. “You’re not doing anything for them other than stopping their ability to support themselves and their children,” he said.
Read more
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thc-tests-land-new-mothers-onto-child-abuse-registries/
