Selah Givens is a bit of a wild child.
Shell wake you up at 6 a.m. Chuck a sippy cup your way.
Insist you play with her until, well, you play with her.
Photo illustration by Matthew Cooley. Photographs in illustration by Adobe Stock, 3
Those tendencies have earned the three-year-old a nickname, says her mother, Doshia Givens: Crazy Horse.
She knows shes loved, she knows shes spoiled, Doshia tellsRolling Stone.
Shes in her villain era.
The smile on her face lights up a room, Doshia says.
Thats why Doshia was devastated when Selah was taken.
Doshia was prescribed heavy-hitting narcotics, oxycodone and Vicodin among them.
So, with her doctors blessing, Doshia says, she started smoking weed.
Shed asked if it would impair her breastfeeding.
No, she recalls him saying.
A lot of patients do it, she remembers a different doctor telling her.
Nothing to worry about.
Over the next couple of months, things were fairly normal.
Doshia got a little better each day.
Nothing extraordinary, Doshia says, but concerning enough to get her checked out.
Across the country, tens of thousands ofmotherslike Doshia are coming under scrutiny because ofmarijuanause.
Family investigations and separations follow.
Black mothers have been particularly vulnerable, a year-longRolling Stoneinvestigation reveals.
Despite marijuana products being at least partially decriminalized in 39 states.
In comparison, separating children from their parents haslong-term effects on nearly every aspectof their health.
Rates of physical illness, like heart disease and diabetes, are higher.
Rates of neurocognitive changes, like developmental delay and regression, are higher.
Rates of mental illness, like depression and suicidality, are higher.
Rates of truancy and incarceration are higher.
Rates of underemployment, unemployment, and poverty are higher.
Some, like Maryland, are passing laws to prevent parental investigations premised on marijuana alone.
Others, like New York, say they arent considering marijuana use as grounds for such investigations.
[They] catalog you to a book, Doshia says.
They see what they want to see, they hear what they want to hear.
GROWING UP IN South Central Los Angeles, Raneisha Hubbert says, every day seemed like a party.
Her extended family brothers, a sister, twin aunts, a gaggle of cousins shared a home.
Barbeques all afternoon and sleepovers all night, Hubbert recalls, Luther Vandross bumping on the stereo.
Family was everything, she tellsRolling Stone.
First, her older brother was removed.
Later, an older sister was taken, too.
Decades later, the cycle kicked off again after her three-year-old son Jayceon wandered out of their home.
It was 2016, and Hubbert had just moved to a snazzy new two-bedroom apartment in Westlake.
So, as Hubbert napped following the hustle and bustle of the move, Jayceon ever mischievous walked out.
But then, over the coming weeks even after Hubbert installed the lock Jayceon found his way out again.
Then a third time, and a fourth.
That time, it wasnt a neighbor who came calling; it was the police.
Soon, DCFS came calling, too.
One of the first items on DCFS checklist: a drug test.
Hubbert tested positive for marijuana.
Days later, Jayceon, and his older sister, Jamiesha, then five, were taken away.
Pee tests arent parenting tests.
If were going to have a system this punitive, its got to be based in science.
These diagnoses became a social judgment about how we live and the decisions we make, Moss says.
Within years, mothers found themselves squarely within the crosshairs of Nixons war, too.
In a 1986 speech, First Lady Nancy Reagan suggested that mothers who use drugs are killing our children.
Since then, tens of thousands of families have been separated every year.
(The agency did not collect the data before 2015.)
You want them to live in the crack mom paradigm because then, youve made your case.
Most do not track those numbers, even as they investigate and separate families for it.
In Ohio alone, more than 70,000 families were investigated for using weed.
Data obtained from West Virginia, Nebraska, and Iowa revealed thousands more investigations over the same period.
Moreover, the data show, these investigations disproportionately target people of color.
In Louisiana, for example, 78 percent of the parents targeted over the past five years were Black.
In North Carolina, 53 percent of those investigated in the past three years were.
Those kinds of drug allegations leave people like Hubbert in a tough spot.
And when it comes to court hearings, she says, drug use all but seals the case.
You cant say anything, Hubbert says.
[You] just have to shut up and listen.
Theres also scarce evidence that secondhand cannabis smoke impacts child development.
Recent studies havefound littlerelationshipbetween cannabis smoke exposure and kids lungs or brains.
One found that cannabis exposure was actuallyrelated to better, rather than worse, reading skills.
(In comparison, secondhand tobacco smokehas been associatedwith worse school performance.)
Many agencies agree that evidence on the harms of marijuana use is lacking.
Take, for example, Wisconsins child welfare statute.
But what constitutes severe in Wisconsin or anywhere else in the country appears to depend on the individual investigator.
I am one of thousands of parents…who are railroaded every day, Hubbert says.
We are in an authoritarian court where there is no law.
DCFS declined to detail their parameters for impairment or appropriate care and supervision.
Its a function of systemic bias, Dettlaff tellsRolling Stone.
[The] definitions of maltreatment are very vague, he says.
Nothing is really codified.
That report wassubsequently buriedby the agency, Gothamistfound.
The racism is in the discretion, Dettlaff says.
By the second month of her pregnancy, Ridgell was vomiting every day.
She was in and out of the emergency room.
She was prescribed one drug, and another, and another.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, or severe morning sickness.
There was really only one thing that helped her: marijuana.
Three months into her pregnancy, her physician renewed her card.
[It] felt like doing what we needed to do to survive, she tellsRolling Stone.
In May 2019, her son Silas was born.
The birth was a crazy blur, Ridgell says: Seconds after delivery, the newborn stopped breathing.
Minutes later, he was on a machine for respiratory support.
Within a few hours, he was whisked away to a specialty hospital in Phoenix.
And shed earned an investigation for neglect.
The probe into Ridgell came despite the fact that she never actually consented to a drug test for Silas.
And yet, this is how a substantial number of cases come to the attention of child protection agencies.
The definitions of maltreatment are very vague.
The racism is in the discretion.
Nonetheless, what ACOG calls test and report practices continue.
Terplan has also advised scores of mothers and attorneys in cases involving substance use.
Suddenly, the case worker becomes the medical expert, Terplan says.
(Ridgell was also taking antidepressants during her pregnancy, which are known to cause jitters in newborns.)
Ridgell could be on the DCS blacklist for up to 25 years.
I feel like they were pulling at straws, she says.
Im not sure if they used any studies or [where] they got their facts from.
[But] you really had to prove your innocence.
DCS maintains that substance use alone did not lead to the decision.
Substantial risk looks like it’s a broad criterion, however.
It didnt take Ridgell long to file an appeal which she won.
But DCS placed her on its list anyway.
DaRonco did not comment on that determination, or on any other aspect of her case.
Many of these policies require updates subsequent to the Ridgell decision, he says.
Pee tests arent parenting tests, she says.
If were going to have a system this punitive, its got to be based in science.
The reported marijuana use, which wont lead to a separation by itself, leads to an investigation.
And to Stein, these cases illustrate a broader pattern: child welfare agencies tendency to criminalize poverty.
Statistics from the federal Administration for Children and Families bear that out.
(Such differences may be explained by increased surveillance of people living in poverty, the agency adds.)
There is no perfect parent, Miles Cloud says.
you might always find a thing.
[The system] is all about pathology when really what youre identifying are structural things.
If you cant pay rent or dont have food on the table, thats not an individual failing.
THE SPECTER OF family separations due to marijuana use also creates a different issue: mothers foregoing care altogether.
States like Mississippi and South Carolinaare already usingchemical endangerment laws to prosecute women criminally for prenatal drug use.
InOklahomaandAlabama, women have been charged for using cannabis including medical marijuana.
Some states are trying to mitigate threats of deterrence related to marijuana use.
Other states are moving in the opposite direction.
According to ACOG, the threat imposed by laws like Ohios risks the health of both mother and child.
In Cleveland, the welfare of mother and fetus especially for those who are Black is a timely issue.
The city has some of the highest rates of Black maternal and fetal death in the country.
Questioned about these statistics, Cornyn says that we want every Ohioan to live up to their full potential.
Its a work in progress, she adds.
Clearly, were not all the way there yet.
Justin like Jamiesha and Jayceon had also found himself in DCFS crosshairs.
Ultimately, the court found those allegations unjustified, and Justin was reunited with his mother.
(Hubbert herself is significantly shorter than the average population.)
Her contact with them is limited to an hour or so a week in a fast-food joint.
The outcomes for other parents have varied, too.
I shouldnt have had to appeal.
And if you miss a test, they told her, that counts as a positive.
How do you know youre not addicted?
a judge asked her at one point, when she questioned the necessity of the tests.
Despite her hesitations, Doshia complied.
Eventually, she and Selah were reunited.
Doshia wonders, though, what will happen if when Selah gets one too many fevers again.
Theyre looking for the smallest things, Doshia says, to take your kids away.
