For those who have no experience with child protective services, the state foster system often brings to mind thoughts of wrongs righted, children saved, and love persevering.

Unfortunately, thats too often not the case.

A recent report reveals how the state foster system acts as a secondary criminal justice system, one that targets cannabis consumersand even medical marijuana patients.

A recent report reveals how the state foster system acts as a secondary criminal justice systemand uses drug allegations, including cannabis use, as a pretext to rip children away from their parents.

The 174-page report, How the Foster System Has Become Ground Zero for the U.S. Drug War, was produced by a coalition of social justice organizations, including the Movement for Family Power, the NYU Family Defense Clinic, and the Drug Policy Alliance.

Recent years have seen infamous examples of children forcibly removed from their homes due to a parents use of medical marijuana:

Those cases arent glitches in the system. They are examples of the system functioning as its meant towhich is to say, case workers are instructed to tear families apart over the slightest whiff of cannabis, even in legal states.

Todays foster system dates back to 1935, when its forerunner was established at the federal level to identify and respond to families living in poverty who were determined to be undeserving of cash assistance.

Our dedication to the idea of bootstrapping has resulted in millions of children being ripped away from parents who may have needed just a little help.

This basic premise still exists to this day. The problem lies in determining which families are undeserving of state or federal aid. Those judgments functionally criminalize poverty. They shift the blame for problematic family conditions away from systemic issues of oppression and onto the individual.

Our collective dedication to the idea of bootstrapping has resulted in millions of children being ripped away from parents who may have needed just a little help.

Children removed from their families and placed into foster or adoptive care often face worse outcomes than children from similar circumstances who remain with their families.

In one survey of nearly 6,000 people incarcerated in the Kansas prison system, 20% had spent time in a state foster system as children. Children who grow up within the foster system are much more likely to be scrutinized by that same system when they themselves become parents.

Instead of helping provide aid to struggling families, the foster system punishes them. Just like the carceral system, the punishment dealt out by the foster system comes with its own traumas and contributes to the cycle of children forced into that system.

The arrival of crack cocaine in the 1980s, and the hysteria surrounding it, spurred politicians into a frenzy of legislation, passing ever-more draconian sentencing laws that disproportionately affected people of color. That era also affected the child welfare system: Child removals more than doubled.

Over time, the federal government has granted more and more power and funding to state-based foster care systems to remove children from families deemed unfit in the eyes of case workers. That pattern intensified during the War on Drugs, aided by Congress passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997.

AFSA created monetary incentives for state foster care agencies to fast-track the permanent removal of children from their families. AFSAs policies mean that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now sends state agencies a benefit of $4,000 to $10,000 for each child adopted out of the foster system.

The enormous costs associated with this bill are covered, in part, by funding originally designated for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a program whose aim is to alleviate the worst impacts of poverty on children.

Because of AFSA, the United States now has the dubious honor of having the highest number of legal orphans in the world.

When it comes to legal cannabis use, many adult consumers and medical marijuana patients are hesitant to reveal their use to their own doctors. That reticence isnt without good reason. Federal and state laws, passed in the name of child protection, have criminalized the doctor-patient privilege of privacy.

How exactly? Heres how the dots connect.

Federal and state laws, passed in the name of child protection, have criminalized the doctor-patient privilege of privacy.

States interested in receiving federal funds provided through the Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act (CAPTA) amendments of 2003, 2010, and 2016 can get that money only if they create a reporting system for medical professionals to utilize when faced with an infant impacted by substance abuse. That medical provider must also notify a local child protective services (CPS) agency, and ensure that the agency establish a plan of safe care for the infant and mother.

That safeguard has effectively put millions of pregnant people and mothers at risk of being reported to CPS for cannabis use that is perfectly legal. Women of color and those struggling economically are far more likely to be reported and thereby taken into a system that may monitor them for years thereafter.

CAPTAs passage resulted in a slew of punitive state-level policies related to parental drug use, and functionally made reporting to child protective services the nations primary response to substance use during pregnancy, according to the Ground Zero report.

The problematic nature of those laws hasnt gone unnoticed. The Family First Act of 2018, passed by Congress two years ago, appears on its surface to remediate some of the harms of the foster system. It legislated the reallocation of funds previously used to rehome foster children towards programs to treat substance abuse, mental health services, and parenting classes.

Some question, though, whether the foster system should be the vehicle through which these services are provided. Given its historically punitive behavior towards parents, the foster system is often viewed with suspicion and mistrust by the communities who stand to benefit from the Family First Act.

On its face, the foster system is meant to protect children from negligent or abusive parents. But the ability to assess a parents ability to raise children has never been standardized. What may be a perfectly normal act of parenting in the eyes of one case worker or agency may be, to a social worker in a different state, cause for removal of children from the home.

Goals follow money. Funding for separating children from families is three times higher than funding for keeping them together.

Furthermore, the system has evolved with the nearly-exclusive focus of separating children from their families. The goal is not to repair families and support struggling parents. The goal is to post positive numbers of children savedthat is, taken from their parents and placed in the state foster care system.

As in any business, goals follow the money. And in the foster system, funding for separating children from their families is three times higher than funding for keeping families together.

One quote stands out in the Ground Zero report: A drug test is not a test for addiction and certainly not a parenting test. So said a nationally renowned OBGYN and addiction medicine specialist interviewed by the reports authors. The fact that the doctor did not feel comfortable or safe enough to attach their name to the quote speaks volumes about how risky it still is to talk bluntly and honestly about drug use.

Once a family comes into contact with the child protective services system, state investigators have nearly unassailable power when it comes to determining if a parent is fit to raise children.

In New York City, 25% of child removals involve allegations of parental drug use.

That power has resulted in a system where, according to the report issued earlier this year, the most consistent variable used to determine child maltreatment was [the investigators] opinion about the presence of maltreatment. When faced with a system whose punitive actions are nearly entirely subjective, how are determinations about parenting made? Too often it comes down to the use of certain categories of drugs.

In New York City, 25% of child removals involve allegations of parental drug use. Although data is hard to come by for foster systems nationally, some studies estimate that over 80% of all foster system cases involve caretaker drug use allegations at some point in the life of the case. Drug use has allowed the foster system a false sense of certainty in their evaluations of parental fitnessso much so that it has become almost weaponized.

Historically, leaders of the War on Drugs often justified their actions by claiming they were protecting children from harm by their drug-addled parents. But, as with most things, the real story is far more complex. Because of the legislation passed to support the foster system nationally, and the corresponding legislation at state and local levels, drug use is equated to drug abuse in nearly all foster system cases.

Think about how the issue of drug use/abuse is racialized. In the contemporary cannabis community, there is a growing movement of mostly white, female parents fighting for the right to enjoy cannabis while raising children. And why not? Its legal in many states, and has been proven to be far safer than alcohol.

But speaking publicly about cannabis use, for women who arent white and economically well off, risks the destruction of their entire family.

If those same mothers were Black and poor, they would face the real risk of permanently losing custody of their children. The report details the story of one mom whose blood was drawn for testing as she was giving birth. When the test turned up evidence of cannabis use within the past few weeks, state workers removed the newborn from the mothers care. It took her two years to contest the removal of her daughter and eventually regain custody.

The criminal justice system has established clear standards for what kind of drug testing is allowed in court. Those same standards dont apply to the foster system.

The most common drug test used within the foster system is, in fact, so inaccurate that it is not allowed to support legal action without confirmatory testing. But within the foster system its enough to start a case file and initiate a years-long battle for parents facing the loss of their children.

Drug treatment programs required by the foster system are functionally more akin to surveillance programs than anything else. Parents are forced, in most cases on their own dime, to attend these programs without any clear indication of what it means to graduate from them. In many cases, the foster system forces parents to remain in these time-intensive programs with little more reason than a suspicion that they are unfit parents.

Hospitals that serve low-income populations regularly engage in drug testing of pregnant women and newborns without their consent.

Then theres the problem of consent. Hospitals that serve predominantly low-income populations regularly engage in drug testing of pregnant women and newborns without their consent. If they find evidence of drug use, those test results are reported to child protective services and can result in immediate removal of the newborn. These are the same drug tests that are not accurate enough to be used in court.

The focus on drug use within the foster system all revolves around the idea that all drug use indicates drug abuse.

The medical world has a clear definition of what constitutes a substance use disorder. As defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(DSM5), substance use must negatively interfere with the users life or the lives of the people around them in order to qualify as a disorder. A simple drug test cannot show that negative effect.

The cause of the struggle for many families is poverty, not drug use.

Despite the foster systems insistence on equating drug use with unfit parenting, studies have found no correlation between parental drug use and child maltreatment. Instead, research has shown a strong correlation between maltreatment and environmental factors associated with poverty such as lack of access to health care and housing.

Poverty is cause of the struggle for many families, not drug use. But the foster system doesnt address poverty. Instead, it uses evidence of drug consumption as a cheap, nonsensical, and counterproductive way to cast moral blame upon parents, and set in motion the violent process of state removal of children from the family home.

The authors of the Ground Zero report have constructed a framework for reimagining the foster system. They offer an action list for each group of stakeholders, as outlined below.

Zoe Sigman serves as Broccoli Magazines science editor, previously served as the program director for Project CBD, and has testified about CBD and cannabis regulation before the FDA. She thinks science is magic made real, and loves breaking the technical jargon down so anyone can understand it. IG: @zoe_sigman

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Focus on the family: How the War on Drugs destroyed America's foster care system - Leafly