Seizure of Children from Drug Producing Homes

"In 2006, the province of Alberta passed the Drug Endangered Child Act,¹⁷ which authorized the state (child welfare authorities or the police) to seize children from drugproducing homes, even if based on suspicion alone.¹⁸ Often these children, and even the parents, might not know about the drugs. More troubling is that there may not even be illicit substances present, but rather the chemicals used to create such substances, and this may be deemed sufficient for apprehension of the children. To add to the equation, the Motherisk Laboratory at the Hospital for Sick Children receives hair samples to be analyzed for drugs of abuse from thousands of parents implicated in child-protection matters each year from across the country, and they are analyzed for drugs of abuse. Based on consultations with child protection workers or the respective authorities, children are rarely removed from drug-using parents’ care until substantial evidence of child safety issues is built. Among our cohort of children presented here, however, the majority of the parents were not known to be using illicit substances themselves and, on the basis of our clinical assessments, appear to be able to parent their children adequately. It is not likely that the production of drugs, particularly marijuana, hinders effective parenting much more than actual drug use, yet the differences in the ways these cases are handled suggest that police and child protection agencies perceive the former to be of greater concern with respect to child safety than the latter."