Drug abuse isn’t just an individual plague. The consequences of drug use extend far beyond the individual user, though decriminalization advocates often don’t acknowledge this reality. As with no-fault divorce, orienting public policy purely around the desires of adults has disastrous consequences for children.
The drug abuse epidemic has claimed more than 100,000 lives each year since 2021. If there’s a common denominator in our polarized nation, it’s drug addiction. From prescription opioids to heroin to the synthetic fentanyl flooding across our southern border, the death toll rises each year. Over the past 15 years, the number of adults suffering from substance use disorder has more than doubled from 22 million in 2010 to 46 million in 2021. (RELATED: Progressives’ Deadly Hypocrisy on ‘Harm Reduction’)
Children of all ages suffer from America’s drug abuse epidemic. Social media allows teenagers to purchase drugs with unprecedented ease, and more and more teens overdose on Chinese fentanyl disguised as prescription pills each year. But young children suffer, too, especially if their parents use drugs.
Young Children Face New Dangers from Drug Decriminalization
The dangers of drug exposure start in utero. Prior to the current drug abuse epidemic, an estimated 400,000–480,000 children were “prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol” each year, according to a report on the subject published by the American Enterprise Institute. Since then, the number has likely risen in tandem with highly increased rates of substance use disorder.
Following birth, the children of drug users face “increased risks of fatality, poisonings, injuries, physical and sexual abuse, and severe neglect, in addition to poor physical, cognitive, and emotional development.”
Parents who use drugs at home around their children aren’t particularly vigilant. Kids have ingested everything from cannabis gummies to fentanyl found around the house. And as drug use is increasingly normalized, the risks to children only increase. From 2014 to 2022 in Minnesota, only three of 88 child maltreatment deaths were caused by drug exposure. One death was related to fentanyl. From 2022 to 2023, nine out of 21 child maltreatment deaths — 23 percent — were caused specifically by exposure to fentanyl.
And in Oregon, where decriminalization has sparked high rates of drug addiction, homelessness, and public disorder, a significant number of fentanyl cases handled by the Oregon Poison Control Center in 2022 were pediatric.
The decriminalization of illicit drugs has halted police investigations of reported illegal drug use. As a result, police are “less likely to encounter situations where children are living with addicted parents,” explained child welfare scholar Naomi Schaefer Riley. Without legal reason to intervene in a parent’s drug use, there’s less ability to act on behalf of children who are endangered or harmed by drug use at home. A teenager might be able to shield herself from the impact of mom’s meth problem, but young children — especially toddlers and infants — have no capacity for defense or self-advocacy.
Changes in Hospital Policy Leave Kids Vulnerable
When weighing the desire of some adults to get high without legal ramifications against the harms — both actual and potential — suffered by children as a result of liberal drug policy, it’s clear that the latter should be the primary consideration when formulating drug policy. But in today’s topsy-turvy world, attention to the safety and welfare of children is rare. The reason? It’s apparently racist to hold parents accountable for drug use that endangers children.
Boston’s Mass General Brigham recently announced a new policy that “discourage[s] medical professionals from reporting mothers who test positive for illegal substances to the state’s child welfare agency.”
The hospital system’s administration found that “[b]lack pregnant people are more likely to be drug tested and to be reported to child welfare systems than white pregnant people.” As a result, the administration decided to simply do away with the reporting system. Apparently, if there aren’t any statistics, there can’t be any racism.
A report to the child welfare system doesn’t mean a case worker will swoop down and remove a child from his mother’s arms. Rather, it prompts an investigation by the agency to ensure the safety of the child and offer rehabilitation resources to the parent in question.
The hospital’s new protocol means that doctors will only file a report in cases where “the infant is suffering or at imminent risk of suffering physical or emotional injury.” This standard is, as Riley puts it, “a very high bar.”
“What does ‘imminent risk’ mean in this context?” she asks in City Journal. “Does it mean that you can only report a mother who is high when she leaves the hospital and forgets to put the baby in a car seat, and who is so out of sorts that she won’t remember how or when to feed the baby?”
Marriage and family are the foremost social institutions, and, in an ideal world, children would certainly remain with their parents. But we live in a world plagued by all kinds of brokenness. When policies prioritize the desires of adults above the safety of children, we’re only sowing seeds of further disorder.
Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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