For decades, the Motherisk Drug Testing Laboratory at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children ran hair-strand drug tests to assess whether pregnant people and parents—mostly mothers—were fit to care for their children. These tests were later found to be unreliable and far below forensics standards, lacking basic safeguards like proper validation, quality control and independent oversight.

Motherisk was no marginal operation. Between 2005 and 2015 alone, the lab tested more than 16,000 people for “child protection” purposes. More than 100 child welfare agencies across five provinces relied on its results. Millions of public dollars were spent on inadequate testing that shaped decisions with lifelong consequences. 

My youngest child was apprehended from the hospital at just two days old, based on compromised and unreliable drug tests.

I became involved with the Children’s Aid Society, Toronto’s primary child welfare organization, due to allegations related to marijuana use while breastfeeding, resulting in years of drug testing and restricted access to my children. In 2008, my youngest child was apprehended from the hospital at just two days old, based on compromised and unreliable drug tests from the Motherisk program.

These faulty results were used to justify decisions that led to me losing custody of my children for more than a decade. Even after the testing failures were acknowledged and apologies were offered, the stigmatizing narratives in court records and case notes were never corrected. I continued to be portrayed as an unfit parent.

A 2018 review largely focused on “fixing” flawed testing methods and oversight. But by framing the problem as a technical failure, we avoided a harder conversation about the deep-seated biases—the moral judgments about drug use and parenting—that made this junk science so easy to believe in the first place.

Motherisk thrived because it replaced human uncertainty with apparent objectivity. It allowed drug use to become a shortcut to judge parental fitness, equating abstinence with good parenting and any drug use with so-called abuse. This was despite decades of medical experts saying that drug testing cannot assess parenting capacity, and Ontario law not even listing drug use on its own as a reason for children’s aid involvement. 

This impulse to “catch” parents rather than support families remains institutionalized today.

Nevertheless, biases and racism of social workers and other professionals continue to drive the reporting of families for drug use, scaring parents and their children away from seeking the very care and support they need. 

This impulse to “catch” parents rather than support families remains institutionalized today through “duty to report” rules. In shelters and other social and health services, staff often feel pressured to call children’s aid even when there is no imminent risk, simply because they are not trained in alternatives and fear legal penalties. 

In Ontario, there were roughly 125,000 calls to children’s aid in 2024-2025, leading to over 63,000 investigations. This surveillance disproportionately targets Indigenous and racialized families.

Framing drug use as a proxy for parenting capacity shields decision-makers from many of the real issues harming families: poverty, inadequate housing, and structural inequality. 

The lesson is not that we need “better” tests. It is that we must end our over-reliance on the child welfare system.

I have experienced the trauma that comes from this firsthand, which caused lasting psychological harm and permanently damaged my sense of safety within health care and child protection systems. Even now that my children are young adults, this painful chapter remains central to my family history.

The lesson of Motherisk is not that we need “better” tests. It is that we must end our over-reliance on the child welfare system as a primary response for ensuring family safety. Families are safer when they are supported with housing, health care, and trusted community-based support—not torn apart by systems that surveil, punish and separate. Skilling up social service and health care workers to learn about alternative responses to mandated reporting should be a first-line prevention strategy.

The science is settled. The unresolved question is why our institutions continue to cling to the same moral judgments that allowed junk science to shatter so many families in the first place.

Anne-Rachelle Boulanger, a lawyer and policy analyst at the HIV Legal Network, and Kathleen Kenny, a postdoctoral research fellow at the College of Global and Community Health at the University of Manitoba, contributed to this article.

Photograph (cropped) via PickPik

The post Ten Years After Motherisk, Parents Who Use Drugs Still Punished appeared first on Filter.

Countries with substantial uptake of vaping have seen accelerated declines in the cigarette smoking which costs millions of lives each year. Yet valid concerns about passive smoking have often morphed into largely media-driven alarm over passive vaping—despite no good evidence that it is harmful.

Such fears have fueled debates over where vaping should be permitted, and they’ve been particularly pronounced when it comes to the potential impact on children. An Alabama law passed in 2023, for example, made it illegal to vape (or smoke) in a car with a child under 15 present, with a potential fine of up to $100.

The new study—conducted by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the SPECTRUM Consortium, and published in JAMA Network Open—set out to compare nicotine absorption levels in three groups of children in the United States: those exposed to secondhand smoke only, those exposed to secondhand vapor only, and those exposed to neither.

Children were categorized based on interviews with their parents or guardians. Those reportedly exposed to both smoke and vapor were excluded.

Blood samples from 1,777 children, aged 3-11, were then sent for analysis at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory. There, concentrations of serum cotinine in the samples were measured—long regarded as a “precise and accurate marker of recent absorption of nicotine,” the researchers noted.

“Compared with children exposed to secondhand smoke, nicotine absorption was 83.6% lower in those exposed to secondhand vapor.”

Nicotine absorption was found to be “highest among children who were exposed to secondhand smoke only, followed by those exposed to secondhand vapor only,” the authors wrote.

The difference between those two groups was actually much bigger than the difference between the vapor-exposure group and the no-exposure group.

“[C]ompared with children exposed to secondhand smoke only, nicotine absorption was 83.6% lower in those exposed to secondhand vapor only and 96.7% lower in those exposed to neither,” the researchers found.

“Our study shows, using data from the real world rather than an artificial lab setting, that nicotine absorption is much lower from secondhand vapor than from secondhand smoking,” lead author Dr. Harry Tattan-Birch said in a press release. 

“Nicotine itself is of limited risk, but it shows what the highest possible exposure might be from secondhand vaping,” he continued. “Exposure to harmful non-nicotine substances present in vapor will likely be substantially lower still.”

Still, the research found that children exposed to secondhand vapor do absorb more nicotine than those exposed to neither smoke nor vapor. Is their exposure to nicotine and other substances something we should be at all worried about?

“The results show that the level of secondhand exposure to nicotine (and other harmful constituents) from being indoors while other people are vaping appears to be minimal,” Tattan-Birch, of the UCL Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care, told Filter.

From his perspective as researcher based in the United Kingdom, he noted that “this means there isn’t the same impetus to ban vaping indoors (e.g., in bars and workplaces) on health grounds alone as there was for smoking.”

Tattan-Birch and his colleagues don’t say that secondhand vapor is totally risk-free, however.

“[A]s secondhand vaping still exposes children to more harmful substances than no vaping or smoking exposure at all, it is best to avoid indoor vaping around children,” UCL’s Professor Lion Shahab, another of the authors, said in the press release.

But Shahab’s much stronger language about smoking in that situation—“should be avoided at all costs”—makes clear that parents or caregivers who switch from cigarettes to vapes are taking a big step forward. Most adults who vape in the UK and other countries previously smoked, and many people who smoke find that vaping is the only way they can quit.

“‘Passive vaping’ is unlikely to pose any health risks.”

Other experts go a little further.

“‘Passive vaping’ is unlikely to pose any health risks,” said Dr. Peter Hajek, professor of clinical psychology and director of the Health and Lifestyle Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London.

Hajek, who was not involved in the new study, publicly commented that it “confirms that, as expected, the amount of nicotine exhaled by vapers, that children and other bystanders are exposed to, is negligible.”

While cigarettes “release …  a number of more serious toxicants into the environment,” he noted, vapes release “no combustion products.”

Dr. Roberto Sussman, a physicist at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico, is also among scientists who say that risks of secondhand vapor are grossly exaggerated.

Sussman previously explained to Filter how exhaled vaping aerosol rapidly evaporates and disperses, and how particulate matter from air pollution, even in indoor environments, is a far more valid concern. Globally, almost 2,000 children under 5 die because of air pollution each day.

The study authors seem to agree that secondhand vapor is not a substantial threat.

“This paper suggests that concerns about secondhand vaping may be somewhat overstated, with secondhand exposure to toxic substances likely to be very low,” Prof. Shahab said in the release.

Photograph by Lindsay Fox via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

The post Vaping Around Kids Is Far Safer for Them Than Smoking appeared first on Filter.

“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.

The post Child Drug Exposure Cases, and the Vilification of Parents Who Use Drugs appeared first on Filter.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 8, was led by Dr. Christopher M. Jones, director of the federal Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The researchers ran a cross-sectional study looking at a decade of data between 2011 and 2021.

They estimated that over 321,000 children lost at least one parent to overdose in that period, with the numbers worsening over time.

“It is devastating to see that almost half of the people who died of a drug overdose had a child,” Nora Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a press release. According to the data, 650,000 adults aged 18-64 died of overdose between 2011 and 2021.

The devastation is impacting some demographics far more than others.

“No family should lose their loved one to an overdose, and each of these deaths represents a tragic loss that could have been prevented,” she continued. “These findings emphasize the need to better support parents in accessing prevention, treatment, and recovery services. In addition, any child who loses a parent to overdose must receive the care and support they need to navigate this painful and traumatic experience.”

The devastation is impacting some demographics far more than others. Indigenous children, in particular, lost parents to overdose at more than twice the rate of non-Hispanic white and Black children. And while parents of all demographics died at increasingly high rates over the study period, the rate for young, non-Hispanic Black parents—those aged 18-25—increased faster than for any other group, rising by an annual average of 23.8 percent. Parents of all genders died at increasingly high rates, but fathers were significantly more likely to die than mothers.

The trauma of losing a parent can extend for years—or generations—to come. A 2021 study, for example, found that children whose parents die for any reason are more likely to develop conditions like anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or substance use disorder. Research has also found that children are likelier to engage in substance use and in suicidal behavior around the anniversary of a parent’s death. And being in the foster care system is associated with harmful or challenging outcomes, especially for youth “aging out” of foster care, like becoming homeless or incarcerated.

Many drug laws make it less likely for parents with issues around substance use to seek help that could keep them safer, for fear of punishment. For example, according to the study, at least 25 states and Washington, DC, consider drug use during pregnancy as “child abuse”—potentially leading to fines, loss of custody, involuntary commitment or even incarceration.

Better drug laws and more accessible harm reduction would reduce the toll for parents and children. But what are some measures that might help within the health care system, and what’s holding them back?

“We should be much more proactive in screening for opioid use disorder, certainly among women who are pregnant or have children,” Volkow told Filter. “We don’t screen sufficiently, so we are missing the opportunity to do an intervention. What’s clear is patients don’t necessarily report to their doctor they have an OUD. If the doctor doesn’t ask, most patients won’t tell them.”

“Patients may not want to go to the doctor because they don’t want to face the consequences as far as being put in jail and losing custody of their children.”

But she described obstacles to regular and ethical interventions of this kind. For one, health care providers who do screen and treat people for OUD find it difficult to be reimbursed by health insurance companies, leaving clinics covering the cost of services. For another, providers in many states are required by law to report pregnant people who are using drugs.  

“If you have these two challenges, one of them not sufficient reimbursement, and the other one these punitive practices by the state,” Volkow continued, “then on the one hand you have clinicians not interested in screening or treating because they won’t be reimbursed, but then the patients may not want to go to the doctor because they don’t want to face the consequences as far as being put in jail for being a women who’s pregnant taking drugs and seeking medication, and losing custody of their children.”

Parental drug use is the leading cause for children being separated from their parents and put in the foster system. One analysis found that from 2011-2017, the number of infants entering foster care grew by 10,000 every year. Black and Indigenous children are overrepresented in child welfare systems, which—like the mass incarceration that also separates families—is another way the drug war targets families of color.

Photograph by Eli Solitas via Unsplash

The post Over 321,000 Children Lost Parents to Overdose in a Decade appeared first on Filter.

This subjected the new family to multiple, stressful visits from Child Protective Services, which removes thousands of children from their homes. There were 14,657 children in New York State foster care in June 2021 (the most recent available data). Most were under the age of 6.

One senior director of foster care told News 10 that year that the state was “at the forefront of trends in child welfare,” and attributed the high number of young kids in the system to parents’ drug use: “In our experience, one of the biggest drivers for the higher rate of children age 5 and younger in foster care is a result of parental neglect and maltreatment impacted by opioid and methamphetamine use.” 

Back to the Sam’s Club salad. Without Jane’s permission or knowledge, staff at a health care facility in Upstate New York had administered a series of drug tests on a urine sample she gave when she went in for a possible urinary tract infection. The lab indicated a “presumptive positive” for opioids.

Even a poppy-seed bagel can be enough to trigger a false positive. According to a lawsuit filed by the organizations Pregnancy Justice and the New York Civil Liberties Union, even after Jane’s baby tested negative, her name remained on the child abuse register. The suit names another woman, Crystal H., as also having been drug tested without consent.

“Drug testing and its consequences subject parents to enormous fear.”

Garnet Health Medical Center (GHMC), operates multiple medical facilities in New York, including the one Jane attended. At each of them, obstetric patients were allegedly subjected to drug testing without their consent in recent years.

New York Attorney General Leticia James recently began investigating the secret drug testing, as Politico reported, submitting subpoenas to obtain patient records. In March, GHMC countered by asking a judge to block the subpoena, arguing that it’s overly broad and “appears to be motivated by political interests.”

Drug testing during or after pregnancy is still widespread in the United States. Consent is legally required in many contexts, but that’s often ignored and policies and practices vary by state.

Advocates point out that parental drug use does not demonstrate bad parenting, nor that a child is at risk. They emphasize that drug testing practices endanger the health and wellbeing of both parent and child.

“There are extremely negative consequences for maternal and infant health,” Emma Roth, senior staff attorney at Pregnancy Justice, told Filter. “Moms need to be together with their babies. They need skin-to-skin contact. They need to be able to breastfeed if they choose to.”

Roth, who is leading the lawsuit against GHMC, said her client desperately wanted to breastfeed but was denied by medical staff in the days after she gave birth, because of her false positive.

Jane may have had a false positive, but Roth stressed that pregnant people who use drugs should never be tested against their will, or subjected to punitive consequences as a result.

She said the worst thing you can do, in a case of physical withdrawal from opioids ingested in the womb, is to isolate a newborn baby. She pointed out that the recommended approach for newborn opioid withdrawal—which lasts a short time and does not present severe health risks—is skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding, if possible. A 2010 study led doctors at Yale’s School of Pediatrics to shift to a  Eat, Sleep, Console approach, which reduces the need for morphine treatment. Other medical facilities have followed suit.

“Drug testing and its consequences subject parents to enormous fear,” Roth added. “Instead of being happy about meeting their baby, they’re terrified their baby will be taken away.”

“A drug test is not a parenting test.”

The American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists both oppose non-consensual drug testing and punitive consequences during pregnancy, and call instead for voluntary, science-based care.

“Pregnant people in pain or struggling with substance use need comprehensive support and treatment, not judgment,” said Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, chair of the AMA Substance Use and Pain Care Task Force in a 2023 statement. “But judgment is often what they unfairly receive from some laws and statutes that imply any indication of substance use by a pregnant individual is automatically representative of child abuse.”

“Research has found that non-punitive public health approaches to treatment result in better outcomes for both pregnant individuals and babies,” he added.

Misogyny is one major factor behind punitive approaches to pregnancy and parenting. Racism is another, which has led to initiatives like Black Maternal Health Week, which took place from April 11-17.

Families of color are disproportionately separated by child protective systems. And Black people are tested at far higher rates than white people during pregnancy. The consequences include broken trust in doctors, which can discourage people from seeking prenatal treatment, putting their lives at risk.

“Black birthing people are three times as likely to die as white,” Jasmine Sankofa, executive director of the Movement for Family Power, told Filter. She described a slew of potential nightmares if someone’s drug test is positive, from having their baby and other kids taken away, to incarceration. And for what?

“A drug test is not a parenting test,” Sankofa observed. “Overall, fuck that.” 

*A pseudonym; the person’s name is redacted from the lawsuit.

Correction, April 29: The original version of this article repeated a claim, taken from reporting elsewhere, that AG James was collaborating with the ACLU/NYCLU in her investigation. This is in fact not true.

Photograph via Rawpixel

The post NY Cases Underline Harms of Drug Testing During Pregnancy appeared first on Filter.

Among the legislatively approved measures are plans to legalize retail cannabis sales and resentence people incarcerated for past marijuana convictions—both of which passed on mostly party-line votes—as well as a more broadly supported measure that would prevent the state from using cannabis alone as evidence of child abuse or neglect.

Here’s a roundup of the major cannabis measures sent to Youngkin’s desk this session. The governor can choose to sign the measures, veto them, allow them to become law without his signature or send them back to lawmakers with requested amendments.

Retail Sales

Use, possession and limited cultivation of cannabis by adults is already legal in Virginia, the result of a Democrat-led proposal approved by lawmakers in 2021. But there’s nowhere for adults to legally buy the drug. Illicit stores have thus sprung up to meet consumer demand, with some estimates valuing the unregulated market at roughly $3 billion.

After months of negotiations on issues such as licensing, social equity, taxes and even whether cannabis plants should be able to be grown outdoors, Democratic lawmakers this session arrived at a compromise bill that would allow retail sales to begin on May 1, 2025. In late February, they passed the legislation on thin margins, with barely any Republican votes.

The question now is whether Gov. Youngkin will let the measure take effect. For months, lawmakers working to pass a legal sales bill have said they’ve received little or no response from Youngkin’s office despite efforts to reach out and see what the governor might be open to. And since the legislature’s passage of the bill, the governor has remained mum. In an email to Marijuana Moment in late February, the his press secretary pointed to Youngkin’s comments earlier in 2024, in which “he said he doesn’t have a lot of interest in pressing forward with marijuana legalization.”

Parental Rights

Legislation to protect parents and guardians who use cannabis was introduced in both chambers this session—SB 115 in the Senate and HB 833 in the House—and won bipartisan support in key floor votes. Notably, votes of the full Senate were unanimous or near-unanimous in support.

Advocates heard of numerous cases in which a parent or guardian’s status as a medical marijuana patient had been used to withhold custody or visitation.

If it becomes law, the bill would prevent cannabis use alone from being considered evidence of child abuse or neglect. It would further provide that drug testing in child custody and visitation matters “shall exclude testing for any substance permitted for lawful use by an adult” under the state’s alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other drug laws. A person’s “lawful possession or consumption” of those substances, the bill says, “shall not serve as a basis to restrict custody or visitation unless other facts establish that such possession or consumption is not in the best interest of the child.”

Advocates say they’ve received numerous calls and emails since legalization about cases in which a parent or guardian’s status as a medical marijuana patient had been used to withhold custody or visitation rights.

As with other issues around cannabis, the governor hasn’t clearly said where he stands on the bill. However given the broad bipartisan support in the Senate and advocates’ effort to incorporate feedback from the governor’s office last year, advocates believe it’s among the more likely cannabis-related measures to win his acceptance.

Unlike the other cannabis proposals this session, the parental rights measure was passed in a manner that gives Youngkin only seven days to review and decide on the bill.

Resentencing

Hundreds of people in Virginia are still incarcerated on marijuana charges despite the commonwealth’s legalization of the drug. SB 696, from Senator Angelia Williams Graves (D), would help many of those individuals by providing resentencing relief for most marijuana convictions, not including those involving violent felonies.

Should the legislation become law, many criminal cases would need to be resentenced by the end of 2024. People whose sentences for other convictions were enhanced because of a prior marijuana conviction, meanwhile, would receive hearings by April 1, 2025. While most cases would be automatic, some people with convictions would need to petition a court for relief.

“As the state stands to make billions of dollars, we have to start looking at the people.”

A variety of civil rights and justice groups support the measure, including Virginia NAACP, NORML, Marijuana Justice, Rise for Youth, the Last Prisoner Project and Nolef Turns.

“As the state stands to make billions of dollars off a plant that probably should never have never been criminalized, we have to start looking at the people,” Sheba Williams, the founder and executive director of Nolef Turns ad a board member for Virginia NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “A lot of us have worked a long time to address this.”

Though Youngkin has given no indication of where he stands on the issue, Williams and other advocates have pledged to take up the reform again next session if the governor stands in the way of the current bill.

Public Employee Protection

HB 149, from Delegate Dan Helmer (D), would allow public-sector employees to use medical marijuana without fear of losing their jobs. It extends protections already granted to private employees through a bill that was passed in 2021. That legislation “unintentionally did not protect public-sector employees,” Helmer has said.

Employees such as firefighters, police officers and teachers who use cannabis to treat medical conditions or diseases would be protected under the bill, which received bipartisan support among lawmakers.

“My members have reported that they’re relying on alcohol far less, they’re sleeping more at home and they’re seeing other positive effects.”

Joe Mirabile, a representative of the Virginia Professional Firefighters association, spoke in favor of the proposal during a committee hearing, noting the benefits members have attributed to cannabis.

“My members have reported that they’re relying on alcohol far less, they’re sleeping more at home and they’re seeing other positive effects, such as reduction of joint and muscle pain without having to use opioid prescriptions,” Mirabile said.

Other Legislation

A number of other cannabis-related bills saw action this session, according to Cardinal News.

HB 452, from Del. Katrina Callsen (D), for example, would undo a provision that prevents people with past convictions for simple marijuana possession from entering first-time “drug offender” programs. That measure, now headed to the governor’s desk, passed the Senate unanimously and even picked up a few Republican votes in the House.

A Republican-led proposal, meanwhile—HB 815 from Del. Mike Cherry—would increase the maximum allowable expiration date for cannabis products to 12 months. That measure passed both chambers on bipartisan votes.

A few other marijuana proposals, Cardinal News reports, were either continued to 2025 or never acted upon at all this session, including a criminal justice bill related to marijuana penalties (HB 773) and a Republican-led measure (HB 448) that would have set a presumptive DUI limit of 0.004 milligrams of delta-9 THC per liter of blood.

Another Republican-sponsored bill, HB 1485, which would have increased the allowable concentration of THC in industrial hemp to 1 percent, was defeated outright in a 12–10 House committee vote.

Photograph of Gov. Youngkin in 2022 by Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post Virginia Cannabis Bills on Sales, Parenting, Resentencing Now With Gov. Youngkin appeared first on Filter.

Cannabis has, in her words, made her a better mother. It’s legal where she lives. Yet she still feels a need to keep her use a secret. Many others feel similarly, fearing legal or child-custody repercussions, or simply the special stigma that society reserves for mothers perceived to transgress.

“I’m still so scared of the stigma, I’m scared of the consequences,” Ashley, 26, told Filter. “I get a lot of comments about how my performance is as a mom. I don’t want to give another reason for people to have a problem with what I’m doing.”

Ashley smoked cannabis occasionally before her daughter came into her life—just a moderate amount every couple of weekends to relax and unwind. When her daughter was born, she ceased smoking entirely, burdened by the guilt she felt of being “a mom taking drugs.” But it wasn’t long before she became curious about other parents out there self-medicating. And when her daughter was around 10 months old, she opened an incognito tab on her computer and searched “moms who do weed.”

“That was when I first heard the term ‘cannamom,”’ Ashley said. “I looked on each social media platform and there’s a cannamom community everywhere. And it was so clear to me that people who engage in [cannabis use] don’t care less about their kids, they don’t love their kids less.”

Connecting with other moms online has alleviated the shame Ashley has felt concerning her own cannabis use.

Ashley, who lives in New York, is able to access cannabis legally at dispensaries, which gives her comfort that she knows exactly what she’s consuming. Initially, she used to cut tiny pieces of gummy edibles and take them when her daughter was already asleep. Now, she occasionally “micro-doses” those gummies when she’s with her daughter, something that helps her manage her anxiety disorder.

“It helps me feel calmer, it helps me hold the moment. I’m not constantly thinking, when can I get a moment to myself? How many pees do I have to take with my child sitting on me? It’s no longer about rushing to the next thing, or trying to make things happen as fast as they can,” she said. “I’m not focusing on the fact that she’s not doing what I want her to do, I’m connecting with her. Instead of placing judgment on either of us, we’re having soft, slow, tender moments. And it’s not that I can’t have those without weed, but it just helps it happen more often.”

Connecting with other moms online has alleviated the shame Ashley has felt concerning her own cannabis use. The communities she visits include r/cannamom on Reddit, where she first found others in her position. Another popular space is r/entwives, a subreddit for women and gender-minority folks who use cannabis. (Its name references the tree people known as “ents” in The Lord of the Rings, a nod to the main cannabis subreddit, r/trees.) It has nearly 120,000 users, who post anything from questions to rants or pictures of their cats.

“It’s a safe space, everyone is kind, everyone is gentle,” said Kara, 52, a moderator on r/entwives who lives in Maryland. “Everyone is super-supportive, and people come with all sorts of questions. It’s just so nice to have that space, it’s vital.”

For many, this online community has led to real-life connections. In Kara’s case, a particularly meaningful one: her girlfriend, Erika.

“We met on Reddit, we started talking on Reddit, and then we started dating on Reddit, and now here we are!” Kara told Filter.

Erika, 49, said that the community focuses on being a positive, stigma-free space—though people have been gently called out for posts that seem to endorse behaviors like driving under the influence or smoking around pets. She’s also seen moms seek safety advice, like how best to store cannabis in child-proof containers.

“It’s about that kind of accountability,” she told Filter.

Erika and Kara both have adolescent children from previous relationships, and Kara is a full-time carer for her 21-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy. They’ve both been open with their children about their cannabis use, but it hasn’t always been that way.

“It was only after legalization that I felt I could have that conversation with my kids without fear of recrimination and repercussions from my ex.”

Erika, who is based in Ontario, said Canada’s 2018 legalization of cannabis made a huge difference to her ability to discuss her use with her kids, mainly by alleviating concerns about custody agreements.

“It was only then that I felt I could have that conversation openly with my kids without fear of recrimination and repercussions from my ex, that gave me the freedom to say, look, we should have this conversation,” she said. “It’s a stigma that’s not there with alcohol, in terms of it being something adults can use in a recreational, responsible way. With marijuana, it’s like, ‘Use it one time, you’re on a slippery slope.’”

Someone all too familiar with the impacts of cannabis-related stigma is Barry Lessin, a harm reduction psychologist in Pennsylvania who has worked with individuals and families impacted by substance use for over 40 years. He often sees patients who are using cannabis to self-medicate anxiety, chronic pain or other health issues, and who are benefiting, he said. However, his patients often feel shame around their cannabis use, which may cause them to hide it from their support networks, as Ashley does when microdosing her gummies.

“Once they’re educated about the idea that your relationship with the substance is like your relationship with nicotine, or your relationship with caffeine, it helps to destigmatize and take the judgment out of cannabis use,” Dr. Lessin told Filter. “They can see that yes, it is medicine. It’s validating for them [to clarify] that a lot of that [stigma] is related to drug laws, drug policy and the drug war, and then they’re more comfortable with using it in a way where they’re not hiding it.”

For many parents who are benefiting from cannabis, medical practitioners’ relationship with the substance adds to the stigma, making it even harder for mothers, in particular, to openly consume it. 

“There’s an awful lot of us who haven’t necessarily found the help or support that they need in the conventional medical system.”

Women are often dismissed in medical settings, with doctors downplaying or ignoring their pain. Erika said that doctors’ lack of experience means many moms have no choice but to self-medicate.

“There’s an awful lot of us who haven’t necessarily found the help or support that they need in the conventional medical system, whether it’s their physical health, hormonal issues, mental health, the assumption is that you’re going to be doing the wrong thing,” she said. “The conception is that it’s not something a professional person, a mother, does.”

Headlines about the continuing spread of legalization may make such experiences surprising to some, but the drug war has a long shadow, as Lessin knows.

“That stigma is really, really engrained,” he emphasized. “Up until 15 years ago, I, as a psychologist working in the field, had an abstinence-only, drug-war infused, one-size-fits-all approach. It wasn’t until I stepped out of that and took a look at the larger picture that I realized, okay, this kind of treatment isn’t helping.”

Very few medical schools, he noted, teach about the endocannabinoid system, which regulates functions like sleep, mood, appetite and memory. So doctors are often uneducated on how cannabis can help with mental or physical health.

“Until it’s being taught in medical schools, it’s going to be a barrier,” Lessin said. “Psychologists and therapists and others coming into the field, 90 percent of them are being taught in the old way of abstinence-only.” he said. He encourages his patients to advocate for their health care, and sometimes speaks to their doctors on their behalf. “It’s part of empowering people. It’s about education.”

“Being an adult is hard, parenting is a different level, and it’s not irresponsible or weak to say that you struggle.”

For Susie*, a 37-year-old mother of two teenage boys, self-medication has been a lifesaver. In the past, she’s struggled with being over-prescribed pharmaceutical anxiety medications, even though she attempted repeatedly to tell doctors she felt numb and couldn’t function on the doses they were giving her. Transitioning to only medicating with cannabis has radically changed her life for the better, she said.

“They had no problem prescribing me Xanax all day long, and they just kept increasing the dosage to the point where I wasn’t a functioning human being anymore,” she told Filter. “I couldn’t have been more medicated, and that was apparently just so acceptable.”

With cannabis, “the fact that it’s decriminalized now means so much.”

In Missouri, where Susie lives, adult-use dispensaries opened in 2023, but it’s been legal medically since 2018 and partially decriminalized since 2014. For Susie, legalization means she’s sure of what she’s purchasing—a kind of security that’s important to her as a mother, she said—and feels able to be open about her use with her children and support circles.

“Not having that would be so exhausting for me, it would be like living a double life,” she said. “I never thought the day would come where I could go and buy weed and not be in trouble at all. Before I couldn’t do anything, but now I can smoke some weed and I can go to dinner, go to the movies, I don’t have issues of freaking out, I don’t have that anxiety anymore.”

Susie also visits r/entwives, where she’s found a community of like-minded women. She’s previously struggled with her drinking, and said cannabis has helped her to rely less on alcohol.

According to Erika, that’s a common type of experience for members of the subreddit to discuss—she’s had her own past struggles with alcohol, too. “The freedom of not having that shame and judgment a lot of time leads people to realize they need help in other areas,” she said. “It’s a lot safer for people to discuss things that are taboo, like relationship issues around the use of substances, and usually it’s alcohol.”

“Being an adult is hard, parenting is a different level, and it’s not irresponsible or weak to say that you struggle,” Erika continued. “There’s a weird, puritanical notion that a woman, or a mother, somehow needs more protection from these dangerous, bad things, because we can’t make decisions rationally, and we aren’t allowed to take responsibility for our mental health.”

“We’re letting go of the fear and the shame.”

As Lessin said, there’s no one-size-fits all approach when it comes to cannabis consumption. Susie, Erika and Kara have each found their own routine with cannabis use that works for them, and Ashley plans to review her use as her daughter gets older.

“The hardest years of parenting, or the most chaotic ones, are the first few ones,” she said. “Once we get through that, I’ll relook at my cannabis use and I’ll refine it, or stop, or cut down. Maybe as she gets older and has sleepovers, I’ll plan a night where I’ll watch a movie and get a little bit high.”

Using cannabis since her daughter’s birth, Ashley recognized, has forced her to come to terms with her preconceived notions about the drug.

“Even a year ago, I would have said that moms who are using cannabis are bad moms,” she said. “And now I realize: No, those moms are sometimes better moms, because it’s about whatever helps us show up for our kids. We’re letting go of the fear and the shame.”

*Names changed to protect anonymity at sources’ request.

Photograph by Elsa Olofsson via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post “Cannamoms” Find Community Can Overcome Stigma appeared first on Filter.

Family and military superiors of the man who killed Walker’s son had reported concerns over his behavior and mental health to law enforcement. This did not prevent 18 murders.

As parents, we have a special responsibility to call out what is clearly and obviously a failed system. Our criminal-legal system has manifestly failed, time and again, to prevent crime; to honor victims; or to deliver solutions to issues related to mental health and drugs. With its focus instead on retribution, it was simply not designed to do these things.

Some might think: Wait—don’t victims of crime really just want to punish people in prisons? That is mostly a myth.

“We have … surveyed more than 10,000 victims—that is, people who have either been directly hurt by violent or property crime or whose immediate family members have been murdered,” wrote Lenore Anderson, cofounder of the Alliance for Safety and Justice and author of In Their Names, in the Atlantic in October.

Our special responsibility as parents applies acutely to the drug war and its terrible consequences for generations of families.

“We found that most victims prefer an approach to public safety that addresses the problem at its roots—say, by treating addiction, offering conflict mediation and mentorship for vulnerable youth, or providing crisis assistance for people with mental illness—and prepares people with convictions for reintegration and law-abiding citizenship,” she continued. “Victims are generally no tougher on crime than nonvictims; they prefer rehabilitation over tough justice, even though they’ve had firsthand experience with crime and the criminal-justice system.”

Our special responsibility as parents applies acutely to the drug war and its terrible consequences for generations of families. Parents are a constituency that few politicians want to cross.

It’s worth remembering that moms played a major role in starting alcohol Prohibition; but also, ultimately, in ending it.

The wider drug war has many complex causes—notably racism. Yet similar patterns can be observed, with bereaved parents, for example, being used by law enforcement to spread more punitive policies. By the same token, in the face of rampant criminalization of people with substance and mental health challenges, I believe moms can—and must—help to stop it.

In 2010, when I published an op-ed titled “Why Parents Should Support Legalizing Pot,” I had a new kindergartener and a 7-year-old, and I was a soccer and PTA mom. After we dropped off our second kid at college this summer, I looked back at that old piece, saying how I really wanted my kids to live in a world where marijuana is legal, and I still think the same—about all drugs.

In fact, having parented teenagers, I feel even more strongly that it is fundamentally wrong to place (especially) young people experiencing substance use issues in a non-therapeutic space such as a prison or jail. The use of incarceration should be extremely disfavored for people with mental health and/or substance use challenges, and entirely discontinued when they have not severely harmed others.

We need to stop thinking about arrest as the beginning of a system. Arrest is actually the back end of a really bad system of care.

The state, in fact, should not decide what happens to our kids who are struggling, in the absence of harms to others. I would be devastated and infuriated if, in my child’s moments of deepest struggle, the state arrested or harmed my child. And in a drug war waged unequally by race and class, we must view this as equally unacceptable for anyone’s child. We have to reject the idea that it’s ok to take anyone away at the moment they may most need the care and support of their families.

We need to stop thinking about arrest as the beginning of a system. Arrest is actually the back end of a really bad system of care that has failed our communities. Our criminal-legal system is used as a facade for the pervasive lack of available and accessible care for community members in need of support.

As the drug war, the “tough-on-crime” policies of the ’80s and ’90s, and the abandonment of the rehabilitative ideal fueled this country’s adherence to the police-punishment-prison response, we spent billions on incarceration and stopped investing in community health resources. Most people we now arrest have lacked the resources to get ahead of problems in their lives—problems that are greatly compounded by arrest.

We know that consistent access to health care reduces both mortality and recidivism for formerly incarcerated people; and the obvious conclusion is that if people were cared for at earlier points when they’re currently being failed, many criminal-legal problems would not emerge in the first place.

It is time for moms and all parents to join together and make clear that we don’t want harsh punishments and more arrests and prosecutions. Rather, we want to shower consistent, loving attention on all people so they don’t get overwhelmed or desperate and struggle to maintain stability without the help they deserve.

We want this—we are moms!—for all our young people, to help them build tools and supports to live healthy, fulfilling lives.

We must demand a system that centers individual, family and community health and safety—an ecosystem of care rather than the failed system of mass incarceration.

Moms United to End the War on Drugs, whose steering committee I just joined after years of involvement, will continue to advocate for the 100 percent of us who make mistakes and the 100 percent of us who can’t do life alone. Let’s please take care of each other’s children when we are acting in the name of “the people.” 

Photograph of protest at the United Nations in New York courtesy of Moms United to End the War on Drugs

The post Moms Can Lead the Fight to End the Drug War appeared first on Filter.

The Rutgers Law Center for People Who Use Drugs is being funded by a $250,000 grant from Vital Strategies, a global public health organization. “People who use drugs are very often viewed as ‘other’ and non-deserving,” Andrew J. Rothman, RLA managing attorney, said in a statement. “We are hoping we can have a broad impact in the state by simply doing this work, bringing visibility to this population, and getting decision makers to think about these folks in a different way.”

People who use illicit drugs are frequently denied very basic rights. Besides jail and a criminal record, drug use can be used as grounds to evict you from housing, take away your children, fire you or prevent your being hired, or deport you. Your access to public benefits like disability insurance or food stamps could also be taken away.

“We issued a survey to our harm reduction partners to get a sense of the legal needs people have.”

The new center aims to protect people from these damaging outcomes. RLA will initially focus on helping people get social security benefits, find housing, process discrimination claims, get state ID cards and drivers licenses, and clear outstanding warrants. It will also work to help restore parental visitation rights, and address barriers to getting a job.

To get a better picture of how the center will operate, Filter spoke with Dionna King, a technical advisor for Vital Strategies’ overdose prevention program. King is directly involved in the rollout of the Rutgers Law Center for People Who Use Drugs.

Alexander Lekhtman: What was the thinking behind this initiative?  

Dionna King: This was inspired by all the work I’ve been doing in drug policy up until now, just understanding that people who use drugs face various forms of discrimination, and legal challenges as a result of criminalization. [RLA] also has a history of doing legal partnerships with diverse agencies to meet the needs of vulnerable populations.

We hope to serve at least 250 clients by the end of this first grant period, which ends in September 2023.

How do you know which services people who use drugs need the most?

We issued a survey to our harm reduction partners to get a sense of the legal needs people have, and learned it was a range. Folks are experiencing housing discrimination—not being able to access housing or being pushed out because of their substance use. A lot of people needed support around benefits programs, like getting their social security benefits.

Many people are lacking documentation or legal ID. Folks who are unhoused sometimes live in tent encampments; when those are disrupted, people’s paperwork gets lost in the shuffle. And if you don’t have ID, you can’t access other services.

What problems are people facing when dealing with police and courts?

On the criminal-legal side, people reported having their harm reduction supplies being confiscated by law enforcement. They’re accessing a syringe service program, and if they have syringes or naloxone on them, they’re having that taken by police. A lot of people also had outstanding warrants they needed support in clearing.

“We’re recording these forms of discrimination we’re seeing and using it to inform potential future work.”

[We’re] also supporting people that have open criminal cases and have public defenders working on them. We’re giving them legal advice to support their current cases, to better strengthen the work their lawyers are doing.

Unfortunately now, the attorneys don’t have the capacity to do direct representation, but they can make referrals to public defenders. We’re recording these forms of discrimination we’re seeing and using it to inform potential future policy work or impact litigation. We want to focus on the discriminatory patterns so we can make a larger case for systemic change.

This work seems similar to what’s known as a “medical-legal partnership,” when health care staff work closely with attorneys to help patients facing not just medical crises but also legal problems like eviction. Is that an accurate comparison?

We pulled from several examples of medical-legal partnerships, but generally these were MLPs that work with treatment providers, so it was a little bit different. They are meeting people in different times in their drug-use continuum, as opposed to meeting people in a harm reduction environment. We wanted to emphasize providing services to folks most vulnerable to overdose.

I don’t believe there’s a similar model in the country, but we did look to international examples. There was a program in Ukraine that was a harm reduction MLP. Open Society Foundations (OSF) conducted a study and found really good practices and value in this approach, and we took from that in our program design.

We wanted to make sure this provided a meaningful service but also didn’t overburden harm reduction providers because they already do so much.

Harm reduction providers, I understand, are the link between you and the people who need legal services. How are people eligible for the program?

The only condition is you have to be referred by a harm reduction provider. There are seven functioning in New Jersey right now. We didn’t want this to be completely open and overburdening the attorney.

“One of our clients was seeking access to inpatient drug treatment, and had mobility issues. The provider wouldn’t treat them because they considered them a fall risk. That’s purely discrimination.”

Is it difficult to do this work with people who may have a history of being mistreated by not just cops and judges, but in some cases even bad experiences with public defenders?

That’s why we emphasize the relationship building component. People do have these experiences with legal services that may skew their perspective on if the attorney is looking out for their best interest. And I don’t want to denigrate public defenders; I think they do fantastic work under very unfortunate circumstances that don’t enable their success for the people they serve.

So how do you build on the work pubic defenders do, and give people a better chance to fight for their rights?

Public defenders can only look at what’s in front of them, and addressing that immediate need. We want to use this law center to inform a larger systemic change that needs to happen. For example, one of our clients was seeking access to inpatient drug treatment, and had mobility issues. The provider wouldn’t treat them because they considered them a fall risk. That’s purely discrimination.

Is there a pattern of discrimination against other people who have other forms of disability trying to receive treatment? We have this case in front of us that gives us an example of how this discrimination is playing out.

Photograph via US Social Security Administration

The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, has received restricted grants from OSF to support filmmaking and other work around methadone.

The post New Center Offers Free Legal Services to People Who Use Drugs in NJ appeared first on Filter.

In his recent book, Drug Use for Grown Ups, Dr. Carl Hart describes himself as a responsible husband, professor, researcher and father, who happens to use heroin. His candor shocked many, even enraging some. It inspired me—both to be public about my own drug use as a parent, and to take an honest look back at how that went. 

In my son’s early years, I had problematic relationships with various drugs. In many ways, my story is typical of what we see played out in film after book after interview. Compounding traumatic events, a fractured family and bullying lead tween girl to start using substances. Eventually, use becomes chaotic. A series of bad relationships, lost jobs and cross-country moves ensue. Twenty years of chaos go by. Finally, woman—a mother now—enters hospital-based 28-day treatment and traditional 12-step program. She recovers. Cue the dramatic violins. Curtain falls on Happy Family. 

Sort of.

I’ve long felt that I was not as bad of a mother as treatment providers, various other health care professionals and even my own family had led me to believe. I knew I must have been a “good mother” at least some of the time. And I now believe I was a better one than anyone—including me—gave me credit for at the time. My son has become an incredible man.

The day my son was born the nurses cursed me.

For so long, I hadn’t wanted kids because I’d been taught that “drug addicts make horrible parents.” The day my son was born the nurses cursed me. When they asked me sweetly, “So honey, when will we see you again?” and I said, “Hell no!” they took offense. Aren’t all women supposed to want children?

After they placed him in my arms for the first time, I held him. Then I said, “Okay, I’d like to go have a smoke.” 

Again, they were disgusted. “What? You don’t want to hold your son?” I replied that I was going to hold him for the rest of his life; they could take him for 15 minutes.

Later, my doctor came in, laughing. ”Okay, what did you say to the nurses?” I was fond of him, and he of me, and I’m grateful he did not perpetuate the cycle of mother-shaming.  

One thing I did well was realize that I was a single young woman (though I had a succession of lovers and boyfriends) who was determined to be a single young woman—not just a mother.  

People can be drug users—and even chaotic drug users—and still be good parents. My son can certainly tell you about a holiday (or two) that I ruined due to my drug use. But he has far more stories about how I was there for him, volunteering for school activities and after-school activities, working long hours at my own business, schlepping him to acting classes, buying him art supplies, protecting him when he got into trouble. 

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to regret nothing. Over the years, many people have asked me if I regret using drugs for so long. They always assume the answer will be “Yes.”  

I seem to constantly surprise people when I say: “No. Because if I did, I’d be a different person with a different life trajectory, and I love what I do. And now I have my son. He means everything to me. So no, I wouldn’t change a thing.” 

One of the most challenging aspects of parenting under the influence is the looming threat of Child Protective Services. Another is the stigma.

Many of us partake in some psychoactive substance or other. We most often do so responsibly. Rates of addiction haven’t changed significantly in years; it’s death rates that have changed, from a poisoned drug supply. 

One of the most challenging aspects of parenting under the influence is the looming threat of Child Protective Services, particularly for parents of color, whom the system targets. Another is the stigma we endure—born of the notion that any drug use is bad and that the only acceptable course of action is therefore to quit.

But as any drug user knows, drugs can be useful in times of stress. It’s telling that alcohol sales increased in the early months of the pandemic (although we’re less sure whether people increased their consumption immediately or were perhaps stockpiling it for lean times, like toilet paper).

Pleasure can be a key, underrepresented benefit of drug use—one that feels especially precious these days. What we’ll never know is how many times, over the past 14 months, moms or dads or grandmothers or caregivers have had a drink, or used another substance, instead of yelling at their partner or their child, or worse. We don’t share these stories because they’re taboo. Yet so many of us can relate to using drugs as a coping mechanism that spares those around us from our frustration and anger.  

We are all complex human beings with complex relationships—to substances, as well as to our children and partners. To label us “bums” or “addicts” is reductive and inaccurate. We need to end these narratives.

Neither is it accurate or helpful to assume that children of “problematic” drug users will become problematic drug users themselves. Think of the stigma against pregnant people who use drugs. Think of the panic around “crack babies”—a racist lie weaponized against Black parents beginning in the 1980s, since been shown to have no basis in reality. Every year in my classroom of graduate counseling psychology students, no one is aware that “crack babies” are a myth. Genetics aren’t fate. What often matters more is how healthily we parents and caregivers respond to our kids’ experimentation. 

It’s crucial for our kids to have accurate and unbiased information about what the drug supply is like these days.

I’ve learned over the years that shaping your life only around your children isn’t healthy for them or for you. Better to not hover, to let them make a few mistakes of their own here and there. It’s our job to teach critical thinking about risk and make space for our kids to figure out which risks are acceptable to them. Trust your own judgment and your kids will learn to trust theirs.

It’s also crucial for our kids to have accurate and unbiased information about what the drug supply is like these days. This means, given that they or their friends are likely to use drugs at some stage, teaching them harm reduction. That includes encouraging them to never use alone, and making clear that they can always talk to us—even if it’s hard for us to hear what they have to say.

Many years ago, during my time teaching in an alcohol and other drugs certification program in the Bay Area, a student forcefully raised her hand during a discussion about harm reduction and said, “My dad was a heroin addict and a lousy father!”  

Tearful and angry, she told us that heroin was what had made him a bad parent. I didn’t know what to say. I asked her if I could get back to her. She agreed, convinced I’d ultimately have to concede that parenting under the influence of heroin was bad—and at first I couldn’t see another conclusion either. 

I went to a colleague and mentor, Dr. Patt Denning, for advice. “Well,” she said, “who’s to say her dad wouldn’t have been a bad father without heroin?” 

When I asked my student this, she didn’t respond right away. Finally, she said, “I never thought about it that way. I was just so angry at the drug for making my dad not able to be there for me, I thought.” 

This grew into an honest and enlightening class discussion that lasted the rest of the semester. And it opened my own mind to the possibility that perhaps—just perhaps—I myself had not been such a bad mother, despite being a “dirty drug addict” for nearly half of my son’s youth. I’d never considered that possibility before.

I wonder how much the shame of being labeled a “drunk,” an “addict,” a “slut” and an embarrassment of other slurs kept me from seeking help earlier than I did. Even people in 12-step programs added to that shame, especially those who told new women members things like, “You need to look for your own part in your sexual assault.” 

We’ve all been guilty of less-than-honorable behavior at some point, often without substances in our systems. Guilt can sometimes be motivating, but guilt is different than shame. 

Shame is not a motivator for positive change. It is more often a reason to stay stuck. And stuck I stayed, for more than 20 years.  It wasn’t until I saw that others could love me for who I was—warts and all—that I began, slowly, to believe I was worthy of positive change. And that my son would not be better off with me dead.    

Addiction isn’t a moral failing, nor is “recreational use”—rather, it is society’s treatment of us that is the moral failing. Like millions of other moms and caregivers, I was doing my best to care for myself and my family. Our American culture just loves binaries too much to think critically about substance use. Things are black or white, right or wrong, clean or dirty. In those narratives, drug use and good parenting are mutually exclusive. And yet the two do coexist, and always have.

Photograph via Pixabay

The post Drug Use Is Perfectly Compatible With Good Parenting appeared first on Filter.