Criminal - False Positive

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

The night before she gave birth, Susan Horton had a salad for dinner. The next day, doctors told her she’d tested positive for opiates - and reported her to child welfare authorities. This episode is from our friends at the Reveal podcast. Listen to a longer version here. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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any easier on us. The best way to make sure they move a lot of units is to make stuff that is, to put it in delicately, sort of boring. This week on Explain It To Me, how to cut through the noise and make sense of your own fashion sense. New episodes every Sunday morning, wherever you get your podcasts. My contractions were coming on a lot stronger and I still had to make dinner for my family. So I got the easiest thing out of the fridge, which was frozen pizza and a salad kit from Costco. This is Susan Horton. She lives in Santa Rosa, California, and in August of 2022, she was

just about to give birth to her fifth child. I don't think I got much sleep that night, and by morning, I remember I was in a lot of pain. Hallie was very big. She was nine pounds, 11 ounces. And I had forgot how hard it is to birth a nine pound baby. So the pushing out took a little longer. It was the next morning that I believe she was a social worker. She came in and said, um, so I just want you to know that your urine tested positive for drugs. Susan asked if they were sure it was her urine that it tested positive.

They said yes. And she asked what drug the test said she'd taken. They told her codeine. Cough syrup? You mean like cough syrup? And she said yes, but it's prescribed cough syrup. So they asked me, were you prescribed cough syrup? And I said, no, absolutely not.

I hardly take Advil. Today, we're sharing an episode from the radio show and podcast Reveal. It's one of the best investigative shows out there. And last year, they shared this story in collaboration with The Marshall Project. Here's reporter Shoshana Walter. She's lying down in her hospital bed,

racking her brain over what she might have eaten or taken that could have caused this result. And she remembers. Ding, ding, ding. The pizza and the salad. A poppy seed salad. It was delicious. You know, it had its separate little packages of dressing

and it had a separate little package of just poppy seeds and they were so crunchy. You know, when you crunch something and you can like hear it in your ears and stuff. So I vividly remember chomping down on those poppy seeds. After the provider leaves the room, she just does a quick Google search and she realizes like that that had to be it. I have no clue what else it could be. So I tell them eventually, I'm like 24 hours ago for dinner, I had a salad and pizza and that salad had a lot of poppy seeds on it. I know from reading her medical records that providers noted her shifting story.

At first she said, you must have gotten me mixed up with someone else. And then they noted that she changed her story to assert that it was this poppy seed salad. Multiple providers file into Susan's room and tell Susan that because she tested positive for opiates, they need to keep the baby in the hospital for five days to monitor for withdrawal symptoms. You can leave, but your baby cannot. And I was not leaving baby. There was no way. And they're like telling me what's going to happen. That they contacted Child Protective Services

and that a CPS investigator would be coming to ask her questions. There was a point where I was just like, this is absurd. I want to go home. I have not taken anything. She basically argues there's no reason for the baby to stay in the hospital because the baby is not going to experience withdrawal symptoms. That falls on deaf hospital because the baby is not going to experience withdrawal symptoms.

That falls on deaf ears because the process has already been set in motion and the investigator is coming in a matter of hours to interview Susan. I felt very emotional and I was alone. I just gave birth the day before. I'm not sleeping. I just felt really ganged up upon. They had a singular piece of evidence that I had taken something and it was wrong. Susan calls her husband, Colin, and is basically like, I need you here.

Because I'm losing it. So Colin comes to the hospital, his parents who are elderly go and stay at the house with the kids, and then the CPS investigator comes. Because this was her fifth child and it was during COVID, she skipped a lot of prenatal appointments. I felt like I went to all the important ones. She lacked childcare and both her husband and her 16-year-old are immunocompromised.

My second born Liam was born with a congenital heart defect and had five open heart surgeries. So Susan basically avoided the doctor during COVID. And they wanted to go over some points like, why did you miss all the prenatal appointments? Your son has a heart condition, right? Would you miss appointments for him? I really went off on her when she asked me that. I was like, my son has a life-threatening

congenital heart defect. Of course, I would take him to every appointment or do whatever surgery needed to save his life. Not going to a prenatal appointment is not the same. Like, what is happening? They want me to sign a safety plan. LESLIE KENDRICKS A safety plan is essentially a voluntary agreement between a family and child protective services that may include additional drug testing, it may include inspections and searches of the home, allowing CPS to interview other people in your life. It can be a very intrusive and invasive agreement.

I literally just said, I haven't done anything. Like, there was no reason for any of this to be taking place and I didn't want to sign something almost like admitting guilt because I was not guilty. But they did not realize what the consequences would be if they did not sign it. Basically, as soon as I made the choice to not sign, she stomped out. I didn't know this at the time, but she was getting a judge to sign a paper to take away my baby. Around the same time that I started talking to Susan,

I was reaching out to other families and Grace and Michael Smith had had this experience at a hospital in Pennsylvania. Their case is a little bit different from Susan's because instead of poppy seeds it actually involves Grace's prescribed medication. They had just moved to the Poconos to be closer to Grace's parents when essentially Grace went into labor with their fourth child. I called Michael and I was like okay my, my water broke, we gotta go. And then me and Michael went in to have a baby.

Everything seemed to be fine. He grabbed my finger and I told him that I was gonna love him for the rest of his life. And everybody in the room just got really quiet and they're, aww. When did you get the sense that something might be going awry. It was the following day when they started talking to us about trying to get him into the NICU. Doctors seemed to think that their son was developing respiratory issues, so they took him to the neonatal intensive care unit.

Shortly after that, the OB-GYN started asking Grace and Michael some questions. Why they moved, what do they do for a living? Grace told the doctor that she's a lawyer and Michael is a stayed home, homeschooling dad who also went to law school. And then finally the doctor told them, well, you tested positive for methamphetamine.

I was like, I'm not sure how that's possible. I mean, I don't take anything that would come up as methamphetamine. Grace was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when she was 12 years old. So she was on a medication called Vivance for her ADHD. And I'm like, well, I take an amphetamine. She's like, well, your urine tests show that you were positive for methamphetamine.

And so we've had to alert the Children's Services who will conduct a, what was the word they used? They're going to conduct a... An investigation of your family. Yeah. Just like Susan and like many parents I've talked to, Grace and Michael just felt furious that their home and privacy would be invaded over something that they didn't do. Oh my god, I don't think so. And my wife's going, nope, I've got reds. They're not coming to my house. The conversation basically went south from there.

I went, I don't trust this hospital anymore. I want to leave. And Michael went, yep, I agree. And I said, where was drawing all consent for treatment for me and for the baby? And we're leaving immediately. And it got really scary, like, just so fast. As soon as she left, I was like, I'm going dress right now, go get the baby. And he went to the NICU, he gave the baby a kiss. Gave him a kiss on the forehead and I told him I would be right back and I wasn't. And I hate that. He goes downstairs to the car to get the car seat.

Pulled the car around to the front, got Grace. Went up two floors to the NICU, and found it locked. They weren't allowed back in the NICU to get their son, and then shortly after that, the police arrived. Running out of the elevator, like into Michael's face, like, okay, so what's the problem here? To which my response was, that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out. This is all going on in the NICU waiting room where there are other families. So we've got a little bit of an audience collected here.

And in front of all of these people, the officer goes, they're saying that you have tested positive for meth and that you need to leave. You are trespassing and if you don't leave, you're gonna be arrested. In the hospital records, the doctor had described Michael as agitated and confrontational. Michael says he was stern but at this point he and Grace understood the stakes of being

combative. I looked at Michael and I said Michael you can't say anything. You just please don't say anything. The police escort the parents down the elevator out through the hospital doors and then finally they drive home without their baby. It was a really dark moment. Like I don't think I've ever felt that low. I didn't know what to do. I didn't even know where to start.

We'll be right back. The most common way for new mothers to be tested for drugs is through urine tests, because they're non-invasive and inexpensive. But the tests aren't always very precise. They identify anything that looks like it could be an illicit drug, but they don't really tell you exactly what the drugs are. Reporter Shoshana Walter talked with Dr. Gwen Miller, a medical director at a lab that analyzes drug tests, including those given to women who have just given birth. Can you list off a few substances that could cause false positives on screens?

Some common cold medications will trigger positive results. The Sudafed that they're taking or the Vicks nasal inhaler. Lobatolol, the blood pressure medication, looks similar to methamphetamine. Lobatolol metabolites are triggering the test into thinking that fentanyl or methamphetamine are present. By Vance, the medication for attention deficit disorders also looks like meth. There's a baby soap that is very commonly used in hospital nurseries and that can show up as positive for marijuana when an infant's urine is tested. Codeine and morphine could come from poppy seeds. I was really shocked when Gwen told me how high the false positive rates can be on these

tests. Close to 50% for many drug classes. These are the types of drug tests that hospitals routinely rely on to determine whether or not a patient used substances during their pregnancy. And the issue is not that they're malfunctioning. You know, this is how P tests work. They cast this wide net. The problem is when hospitals act on these preliminary results. Actions should not be taken based on a single drug testing result period. What Gwen said is that there should be a second step, and that's a more definitive test where

a toxicologist looks at the molecules in that sample to determine whether or not they are the illicit substance that the screen identified. But really that type of testing is not mandated. It's not standardized. And so each hospital gets to decide what type of tests they do. Many hospitals just don't do that second more definitive test.

For one, it's expensive, and also they're just not legally required to do it. Federal law require states to identify babies that are, quote, affected by substances and refer them to child welfare authorities. But when I reviewed every state law and policy, I learned that most states go even further than that. They're requiring hospitals to take action any time an infant is simply exposed or even potentially exposed to substances. And the fastest, easiest way to

determine exposure is having the mom pee in a cup. No state requires hospitals to do any follow-up test once they have that initial result. And even when they do that follow-up test once they have that initial result. And even when they do that follow-up test, it can take a while for the results to come back, which could mean releasing a baby to a potentially unsafe caregiver. And you have to remember, medical providers are mandatory reporters. They can be criminally charged for failing to report child abuse and neglect. So hospitals are basically erring on the side of caution, either because they're worried about the baby or they're worried about liability. When Grace Smith tested positive for meth at a hospital in Pennsylvania,

she and her husband insisted the result was wrong. I've never done anything like that in my life. So it was just unthinkable that it was being thrown as an accusation and by the hospital no less. This was a new hospital for Grace and Michael. They had just moved. So when she came in to give birth, she actually gave them a copy of her medical records from

her previous provider. So they would know what medications she was on. Because they were like, you know, we're going to do a drug screen. Like they told us at the outset. I was like, okay, here's my medical marijuana card and here's my prescription for five ants. Her OB had told her it was fine to continue her ADHD meds during pregnancy. So when this new doctor came in saying Grace had tested positive for meth, Michael started urging her to look at Grace's old records. You have her medical records.

You know she's on Vyvanse. Vyvanse is amphetamine. It's prescribed amphetamine. And when Grace was drug tested by her previous OB, who used a more precise test. She tested positive for amphetamine, her prescription medication, and negative for methamphetamine. I asked her, did you call her OB, whose name is right at the top there? It's been her OB for years. And what was her response to you asking if she'd looked at her records?

She didn't care. She didn't care. In the doctor's notes, she says that Michael asked why they weren't consulting the records or contacting medical providers. And in her own notes, she tells the parents, it's not the hospital's job to investigate. Their responsibility is to report the case to Monroe County Children and Youth Services. They shouldn't have a test that doesn't differentiate between a legal substance and

any legal substance, period. They shouldn't use that, ever. I reached out to St. Luke's University Health Network and a spokesperson declined to answer questions about Grayson Michael's case. What he said is that the hospital complies with all the rules and regulations around testing and reporting. In Grayson Michael's case, a confirmation test could have clarified that she was positive only for her prescription medication. But in other cases I've looked at, confirmation tests are not enough.

For example, poppy seeds actually do contain codeine. So when Susan Horton ate that crunchy poppy seed salad, it's not a surprise that her test was positive. And behind the scenes, her doctors and the CPS caseworkers were even talking about the poppy seeds. Can poppy seeds give a dirty drug test? And the answer was yes. There is a way to determine whether poppy seeds might have caused a positive result. And that is to look in the urine sample for the presence of the compound thebane.

But there's no indication in the medical records that they did that test or even were aware that it existed. I felt like everyone at the hospital immediately after having the positive drug test was against me. I didn't feel like any one of them felt like there was a possibility that it could be wrong. Susan's hospital and CPS both declined to say anything about her case specifically. A spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente said that they take their role as mandated reporters very seriously and that they always conduct a, quote, multifaceted assessment before reporting someone. An official with CPS told me in general a positive drug test on its own doesn't warrant

an investigation. She said they need to see an impact to the child. People are always asking me how many women are affected by false positive drug tests. How many babies have been removed from their families? I wish I had an answer. There's no agency that tracks this information and it's extraordinarily difficult to get medical and child welfare records, which are confidential. What I do know from talking to top experts in this field

is that drug testing of pregnant patients is incredibly common due in part to the opioid epidemic. And every year, tens of thousands of babies are reported to Child Protective Services without any guarantee that the underlying test results are accurate. In 2022 alone, more than 35,000 of these cases were reported and authorities removed more than 6,000 infants

from their families. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Oh my God. When Grace and Michael told me their story, it was almost three years after Grace had given birth.

I visited them at their house in the Poconos in the dead of winter. He's super friendly. Two dogs. Daddy. Okay, you have to tell me how to play it. Four kids. This is the kid himself. This is Julian.

Yeah, this is Julian. Hi, Julian. Grace grew up in a big family, and both of her parents and her sister have an attention deficit disorder. My sister was the youngest person in the state to be medicated for it. Oh my gosh, how old was she? Three, I think. And the CDC wanted to do a family study on our family because we all had it.

Grace's mom was actually pretty funny about so many of them having ADHD. We're not a very good breeding pair. This is the house Grace and Michael came home to after they were kicked out of the hospital without their new baby, Julian. But at the time, it wasn't all decked out in thrift store furniture and sci-fi books.

Instead, there was stuff piled everywhere because they'd just moved here. When I went into labor, the house was completely, it was still boxed up. We all had our mattresses, but everything was in boxes. And they both just felt broken. The next day when we woke up, I would call the hospital every couple of hours

and see if he was doing okay, and they'd tell me he's doing okay. He's taking formula okay. And I just remember how hard that hit me. Ugh. Later that day, the hospital tells Grace I just remember how hard that hit me. Later that day, the hospital tells Grace that she is allowed to come back to the hospital and visit. You're allowed to come back in. And Michael is not allowed to come.

But your husband can't come. He's still barred from entering the hospital. I was like, okay, I'm coming. I'll be right there. If he was there for two weeks, I was gonna sleep on a chair for freaking two weeks. And that's what I slept on for the next two nights. There's no privacy, a security guard is posted outside and she's required to leave the curtain

open. It made me feel paranoid and like I also couldn't act like I was paranoid. Grace stays in the hospital for a couple days while the hospital is treating her son's respiratory problem and while she's there a worker from Child Protective Services arrives. The guy who came into the hospital, he couldn't have been older than 21, 22, tops. It was just, I'm just sitting there having to swallow my pride and going like, this person is about to make a decision based on my kids. At the same exact time, a keysworker goes to Grace and Michael's house

to do a home inspection and to interview Michael. He came to the door, he's a big guy. Michael's approach was kind of just to be very amiable. I was really nice to him. I reached out to Monroe County Children and Youth Services, and they declined to comment. But after those two interviews and home inspection, the agency notifies the hospital that they can release the baby.

Do you remember when I finally got to bring Julian home from the hospital? I just remember you got back and you were like, we have him now or something. That was the only thing I remember from that day. You just told him Julian. When we didn't have him, you and Dad were crying. Hello, Julian. During my visit, I gave Julian my headphones

so he could hear people talking on the mic. Hey. Hey, mom. Hello. Hi, Julian. What's your name? What's your name? Julian.

That's right. Julian, how old are you? We're old. My name's Julian. He's two. He's in the weeks or two where he's starting to take sentences up slightly. I'm only Julian. I'm only Julian.

I'm only Julian. I'm only Julian. We'll be right back. Susan Horton's poppy seed salad saga officially ended about two weeks after her daughter was born. The baby didn't get to live at home those first couple of weeks. Thank you. Before Susan was allowed to even be alone with her, she had to convince child welfare authorities and a juvenile court judge

that she wasn't a danger to her child. Susan remembers her attorney advising her not to bring up the poppy seeds in court. I had receipts that I had bought it from Costco about four or five days before, but he was like, do not mention the poppy seed salad because it sounds stupid. And I realized that. But that is what caused the dirty drug test. So why are we not talking about the poppy seed salad?

Susan and her husband agreed to more testing and a home inspection. And once that was done, the judge just dismissed the case. But this experience has created an undercurrent of doubt for Susan. We can go outside if you want. Susan really believes in teaching her kids to feel comfortable in nature. And so she has them playing outside all the time, helping to plant the garden.

What's that? It's a worm. Should we save the worm? Yeah. Yes. This scene right here is like Susan Horton's mothering strategy. Yeah. Yeah.

So she's got her toes in what was a water hole. Now that she's kicking, it's more of a mud hole. She was like splashing in the mud puddle and her bare feet and legs. Just kicking her little toes. Susan feels like that's such an important part of childhood. Watch this, a bug. And she said that even in this moment when she and I were talking and watching her daughter

delighting in the muddy puddle, that she had this fear that passed through her. Like, if anyone knew that she was in a little dirty, watery hole playing, that someone out there would see it as neglect or abuse in some way. It's just undermined her sense of self and confidence as a mother. Mama's gonna get you. Mama's gonna get you. Ah. Getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha, getcha, ah. It took Grace and Michael Smith three days

to bring their son Julian back to their home in the Poconos. Cypress. Yep, cypress poops. But they remained under investigation by Child Protective Services for another month. Like Susan, they spent several thousand dollars on an attorney, plus $300 more to pay for their own follow-up drug test. It was Grace's mom who had the idea of doing a hair follicle test, which can identify specific

illicit drugs going back three months. We knew that we had to get the lie, the initial lie put down before we can make any progress. And as soon as I turned that into them, that was it. CPS then closed their case. Very cut and dry, very bureaucratic. Oh my gosh. There's a dog peeking.

You could see just one eye peeking around that door. One of the things I found in my reporting that totally blew me away is that there's a known solution to all of this. There are already laws and regulations for drug testing, just not when it comes to pregnant people. When the Reagan administration started drug testing many workers in the 1980s, those workers were up in arms about false positives.

So now there are all these protections. Many workers have the right to confirmation tests. They have the right to a review from a specially trained doctor who talks to them about what they've eaten or taken that could have caused a positive result. I actually found this report from the 90s where a federal advisory committee recommended pregnant women get all of those same rights. But that detail buried in that report was basically ignored. So today, even most child welfare workers have protections in the workplace, but the mothers they're tasked with investigating have none. Michael and Grace were so incredibly upset by their experience that they spent the entire

next year filing their own lawsuit against everyone they thought might have been involved. The complaint was almost a thousand pages long, and it didn't get very far. The hospital argued it did not violate Grace's privacy and civil rights. And the judge eventually dismissed the case, saying in part that the Smiths did not sufficiently argue their claims. You could see that as a total failure, but that's not how Grace's parents see it. They had to do that lawsuit. They could not have lived with themselves if they hadn't tried.

Just to make sure that this wouldn't happen again. You got to try. They wanted justice. Justice is important to people. You know, when things go wrong, you say, well, somebody's got to do something here. It's the only way we improve. Special thanks to the team at Reveal and The Marshall Project. You can listen to a longer version of this piece on the Reveal podcast at the link in our show notes. This piece was reported by Shoshana Walter and was produced by Mary Ann McCune and edited

by Jenny Casas. Additional editorial support from Manuel Torres, Nina Martin, and Kate Howard. Score and sound design by Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda. They had help from Claire Mullen. Fact checking by Nicky Frick and Kim Frieda. Legal Review by Lita Walker. Reveal's interim executive producers are Brett Myers and Taki Telanidis. You can listen to many more great episodes of Reveal at revealnews.org.

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