Americans are having a few regrets about their approach to child safety in the care of drug-using parents.
Earlier this month, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said she never should have signed the state’s 2019 Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act. “We were releasing, after they were well enough to go home, infants in the care of highly drug-addicted parents who were not required to take any service or get treatment for their addiction,” Grisham said. “Now, I don’t know if there’s any better recipe for a disaster in America than that one.”
The policy, which was part of what Grisham described as a “public health” approach to child welfare, provided “voluntary plans of safe care” to the parents of infants who were born exposed to illegal substances. Child protective services would not be called about these cases because that was seen as punitive.
The problems with the law became clear immediately. At least 15 babies with these plans wound up dead in 2020 and 2021, two of them within days of their birth, according to state records. But that is an underestimate of the policy’s harm, because families could also simply refuse to participate, and many of their children are believed to have wound up dead too.
The advocacy group New Mexico Child First Network estimates that since the policy was enacted, at least one child born exposed to an illegal substance is dying each month because of abuse or neglect from drug-addicted parents. Causes of death included drug ingestion, unsafe sleep and parents’ failure to seek medical attention for their often medically fragile infants.
None of this should have been a surprise. As early as 2021, a report from New Mexico noted, “data show that a high percentage of families are declining services when referred.” The governor’s office recently asked a judge to review these cases before babies were sent home. Of 180 cases examined so far, the judge ruled in 178 cases that the baby was not safe at home.
New Mexico was not the only state to adopt this approach of giving parents information about treatment, but not actually forcing them to engage in it — or protecting their children. Connecticut has a similar policy: Such births are technically reported, but without any names or contact information, which means that child welfare agencies can’t follow up. So does Los Angeles. Under these policies, families are asked to “identify your goals” and “identify the supports that you already have, and those you need.” Some hospitals, including most prominently Mass General Brigham in Boston, recently decided to stop automatically calling child protective services when newborns test positive for drugs.
The assumption that parents of young children need only be offered services and support in order to keep their children safe has resulted in other misguided policies. Washington state, for instance, passed the Keeping Families Together Act in 2021, with the goal of sending fewer children into foster care. The law offered parents suffering from drug addiction an array of voluntary options including drug treatment, mental health services and housing. It was passed with overwhelming support from Democrats and a majority of Republican votes too. Who could be against “keeping families together”?
But the policy has produced tragic results. More than 100 kids have died or suffered near-fatal injuries while living in homes that Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families knew were unsafe. Of those, 68% of parents had refused the services offered. Republican Rep. Travis Couture recently acknowledged that there were good reasons in his view to pursue such a policy — including reducing racial disparities in foster care.
But Couture, who was not in office when the bill passed, also suggested that his colleagues (including those on his side of the aisle) need to do some serious rethinking. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” he told a crowd on the steps of the Capitol. And Democrat Lillian Ortiz-Self, who was the original sponsor of the bill, says there needs to be more oversight from the courts when the allegations of maltreatment involve a child under 5. The Seattle Times, which initially said the success of the program depended on providing drug-addicted parents with a larger “social safety net,” now acknowledges that parents need “more oversight.”
The notion that we can assume people suffering from substance use disorders will freely choose what is best for them and their children is regularly undermined by reality. New York City has seen 18 people die from exposure to frigid temperatures in the last few weeks because Mayor Zohran Mamdani will not allow city workers to force them into shelters. Some of the mayor’s staunchest allies are questioning the idea that people suffering from addiction should be given a choice in these circumstances. “Being homeless shouldn’t be a death sentence,” Queens borough president Donovan Richards, a Democrat who supported Mamdani last year, has said. “You can’t let the people stay out there. These are people in crisis.”
Slowly, it seems, the tide is shifting on drug policy. Americans’ support for cannabis legalization has dropped in the last year. The New York Times editorial board recently announced “It’s Time for America to Admit It Has a Marijuana Problem,” citing higher rates of use and addiction and the disproportionate harms on vulnerable populations. Vancouver, host of one of the first safe-injection sites and harm-reduction policies, has shut down its program.
It is not that we want to throw everyone in jail for using drugs. Nor do we need to take every child of a parent who uses drugs into foster care. But we cannot be naïve about the ways that drugs not only impair people’s ability to keep themselves and their children safe. They also prevent people from accepting the help they desperately need.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she leads Lives Cut Short, a project to document child maltreatment fatalities.
