The woman, flanked by detectives in the video, hangs her head as they cuff her.
“It never should have happened,” Brianne Ehlinger, 33, later said tearfully, in a recorded law enforcement interview that was recently made public by investigators in Boone County, Kentucky. “I have an addiction problem. I have since I was 18. I’ve had two years clean recently. And, um, I recently relapsed about a month ago.”
When her baby seemed to be having trouble breathing in November 2023, she alerted her partner, Shawn Gardner, who quickly called 911.
Their baby was fine in the end. But Ehlinger told the police that she’d forgotten to wash her hands after using heroin. “Later on, I was playing with my kids, and I thought she had something in her mouth. So, I put my finger in her mouth to check her mouth and then she kinda, like… she wasn’t breathing, like something was going on.”
The story became one of many seized upon by media to vilify parents—and particularly mothers—who use drugs.
She and Gardner, who allegedly brought her the drugs, are held on $100,000 bail and face one-to-five years in prison for wanton endangerment and endangering the welfare of a minor. The child was placed with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Did heroin residue trigger an overdose reaction in the baby? She was given Narcan, which law enforcement said was effective—and which doesn’t prove that it was needed. Media reports make no mention of a toxicology report. Relevant context is police officers’ revival of the pernicious myth of fentanyl touch overdose whenever one of them has a panic attack after seeing a powder.
Regardless, the story became one of many seized upon by media to vilify parents—and particularly mothers—who use drugs.
A July 1 New York Post article described Ehlinger as a “negligent mom.” In addition to doleful mugshots of both parents, the Post published social media pictures of Ehlinger, pregnant and flipping someone off while eating in bed, and Gardner, smoking a cigarette: bad parents.
In that same week alone, media reported on at least five other cases of parents being criminally charged or sentenced on the basis of a child overdosing. All but one of the defendants were women.
A North Carolina woman was charged with child abuse after her son allegedly overdosed, nonfatally, on her drugs. She, too, is being held on $100,000 bail.
A woman in Las Vegas was charged with murder, after her 1-year-old son died from ingesting fentanyl, according to the coroner’s office.
A man in New Hampshire, described as a “felon” in the local news, was arrested for felony possession of a controlled drug and endangering the welfare of a child, after his 11-year-old reportedly suffered a nonfatal fentanyl overdose.
“It’s important that our responses to people who use drugs are rooted in health.”
A woman in Philadelphia was charged with second-degree manslaughter and possession, after her baby son was found to have died from exposure to xylazine.
And a woman in Arizona was sentenced to 11.5 years for second-degree murder; her toddler died after consuming fentanyl.
Such stories prompt outrage. The tragedies among them are real. The sentences that follow are severe. But Emily Kaltenbach, senior director of state campaigns at the Drug Policy Alliance, told Filter that regardless of the circumstances, “It’s important that our responses to people who use drugs are rooted in health.”
Providing support and resources to parents who use drugs, or those with substance use disorder, would help children, she suggested, unlike their parents’ shaming and criminalization.
With fentanyl widespread in the drug supply and continually sparking alarmist headlines, one thing that people who use drugs need is accurate information, Kaltenbach added. “There’s a lot of misinformation about how it might cause an overdose. Much of the information on fentanyl is fear-driven misinformation that doesn’t help people.”
Despite the outsize attention generated by child drug-exposure stories, it’s a rarity in the grand scheme of things. And Dinah Ortiz, a human rights activist with expertise in child removal by the state, told Filter that drug use is often a pretext for the system to take kids, especially from Black and Brown parents.
“It’s just not true that people who might use drugs don’t love their kids, or are bad parents.”
The threat of a knock on the door from child services makes both parents and kids unsafe, she added. “Parents should be able to seek help without being worried their children would be taken.”
In her time fighting for the rights of families, including those impacted by drug use, Ortiz has found that child services “literally remove kids based on their own sense of ‘morals.’ On how they think [people] should be raising their own children.”
Societal condemnation of people who use drugs—especially parents, and especially mothers—infuses our culture. But whether you use drugs, or which drugs you use, has no meaningful bearing on whether you’re a good parent.
“Everyone’s drank the Kool-Aid,” Ortiz said, noting that our most powerful institutions typically assume people using banned drugs are both “addicted” and failing in their responsibilities as caretakers. “First, not every drug user is drug-dependent. Also, it’s just not true that people who might use drugs don’t love their kids, or are bad parents.”
The environment of shaming and punishment for drug use puts everyone at greater risk, she concluded, because parents are scared to seek out advice on how to use safely or how to get help if they want it. And it’s that very culture that helps to drive our unprecedented overdose crisis. “We’ve lost too many.”
Photograph via RawPixel/Public Domain
The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, previously received a restricted grant from the Drug Policy Alliance.