Oklahoma is considering a bill that would increase the state’s authority to intervene when people use unregulated drugs during pregnancy, if they have a record of using drugs during a previous pregnancy. The Sir Major White-Bullock Child Protection and Family Notification Act, or HB 3052, was introduced in January and unanimously passed its first committee hearing February 18.
The bill would trigger greater involvement from the Department of Human Services when anyone gives birth to a “drug-exposed infant,” if they have already done so within the past five years. It defines this to mean either “a newborn who tests positive at birth for a controlled dangerous substance or whose mother tests positive at delivery.”
Legislators contend that repeat drug-exposed births “constitute a foreseeable and preventable risk to infant safety,” and therefore DHS should escalate its response as a preventive measure. Under the proposed bill, all such cases would trigger mandatory “enhanced child safety reviews” in which the department must review all prior child welfare records, taking particular note of compliance and outcomes, and assess the situation in terms of “cumulative risk, not isolated incidents.”
The bill also supports DHS stepping in before the newborn is discharged from the hospital, including by creating plans for supervised visitation and “kinship placement” as a preferred alternative to foster placement. The department would also consider court-ordered treatment and drug-testing, as well as referrals to “specialized maternal addiction treatment programs.”
HB 3052 is named for Sir Major White-Bullock, who was 11 months old when he died of fentanyl overdose in November 2023. His great-aunt Clarissa Milton told KJRH that when he was born doctors had identified benzodiazepines in his umbilical cord, and that the same substance had been found in his mother’s system during a previous pregnancy when she was drug-tested at a prenatal visit.
“Stable family members are often willing and capable of protecting children but are not notified due to procedural silos or narrow interpretations of confidentiality,” the bill states. If enacted, DHS would be required to inform family members that it had identified repeat prenatal exposure; patient confidentiality would no longer be grounds for not doing so.
Family members would be considered qualified to step in as the primary caregiver in cooperation with DHS, if they are willing and able to do so and have no substantiated record of child abuse or neglect.
Despite widespread misconceptions around the issue, drug use during pregnancy is generally not harmful to the fetus, nor is it a reliable predictor of fatal exposure after the child is born.
Today, drug violations from possession to trafficking are routinely punished more harshly on the second or subsequent conviction.
In the 1970s, the United States became increasingly enamored with the concept of the “career criminal” and began to develop law enforcement policies from the premise that a disproportionate share of violent felonies were carried out by a small population of “repeat offenders,” known variously “habitual offenders,” “persistent offenders” or “recidivists.” The idea was that it would be economical for the government to identify such people and create separate penalties just for them.
“The logic of the policy is efficiency incarnate,” the Department of Justice wrote in 1986. “Concentrate one’s limited resources on the few criminals who generate the most serious crimes.”
This fueled interest in predictive policies that justified longer sentences with the argument that they were the only way to keep the public safe from people who’d been identified as dangerous, and who if not incarcerated were sure to strike again.
Today, drug violations from possession to trafficking are routinely punished more harshly on the second or subsequent conviction, in some cases escalating penalties from a few years in prison to mandatory life sentences. “Repeat offender” convictions mostly target low-income communities and often reflect behavior that was not violent in nature, but the rhetoric is used to sell the public an image of a pathological deviant person who’s been given many chances but is either determined to continue breaking the law or just can’t help themselves.
Image via Centers for Disease Control and Prevention