A mother has revealed how a Costco salad led to the hellish ordeal that saw her newborn baby kidnapped during birth.
Her nightmare began in August 2022, when Susan Horton was pregnant. I ate a ready-made salad with poppy seeds.
When she gave birth the next morning at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in California, she was told she would not be able to take her healthy newborn baby home.
Tests detected opiates in the mother-of-five’s urine, which doctors interpreted as a sign she was abusing prescription drugs.
Horton, who was horrified, claimed that he had never done drugs in his life, and through process of elimination, it was discovered that the cause of the test was poppy seeds. Poppy seeds contain opiates and are known to show up on drug tests. .
Susan Horton (pictured above with one of her children)
What followed was a humiliating two-week battle to get her daughter Harry back.
Horton had to leave the hospital without her children and was hauled into juvenile court to prove she was not a danger to children.
she said reveal the news: “he [the doctor] “Well, your urine test came back positive for opiates.” I said, “That doesn’t make sense. I’ve never done drugs in my life.”
“They refused to take a new sample. They took her away. I had to leave the hospital without her.
“I was very emotional and alone. I had just given birth the day before and hadn’t slept, but it really felt like I was being mobbed.
“They had the only evidence that I had stolen something, and they were wrong.”
Her urine tested positive for an opiate called codeine. Codeine is also found in prescription cough medicine and sometimes in unwashed poppy seeds.
The salad she ate was a Poppy Seed Chopped Salad Kit from Costco.
The substance is found in the plant’s seed pods and can cause a positive drug test if it gets on the seeds during harvest.
Last year, the U.S. military warned soldiers not to eat bagels sprinkled with poppy seeds or poppy seed muffins, warning that they could affect drug test results.
And last March, two New Jersey mothers sued a hospital over drug test results, saying their positive results were caused by eating poppy seed bagels.
The University of Florida Health System says online that while poppy seeds contain very little opiates enough to make people intoxicated, the seeds could still cause a positive result due to the “highly sensitive” nature of drug tests. This means that there is a warning.
But despite Ms. Horton’s protests. The hospital notified Child Protective Services, which sent an employee to conduct an interview.
Mother shares her story to warn others of danger
After she refused to sign a security plan, a document that would allow her to meet with friends and family and search her home, authorities had a judge sign a document that began the process of removing the child.
The Santa Rosa-based mother then had to appear in juvenile court to assure a judge that she was not a danger to her children. As a result of negotiations, she also agreed to an inspection of her home and further tests before the judge dismissed the case and allowed her to take her baby home.
Horton never expected to be drug tested after giving birth. The system for getting tested was patchy across the country.
In most cases, it is up to hospitals and doctors to decide whether to drug test a mother, but drug testing is usually done on babies whose mothers are suspected of or have a history of drug abuse. This will only be done for
Only four states – North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Kentucky – require hospitals to test both new mothers and their children if medical professionals suspect drug use.
It is estimated that in 2022, more than 35,000 cases of mothers testing positive for drugs were reported, resulting in more than 6,000 children being separated from their families.
Horton said she told her story to warn others of the risks and encourage them to take more safeguards against false positives. She doesn’t want hospitals to continue taking test results at face value.
A spokesperson for Kaiser Permanente, where she gave birth, said they could not comment on her specific case but said they take their role seriously.
They added that the hospital always conducts a “multidimensional evaluation before reporting someone.”
CPS officials suggested to Reveal News that a positive drug test usually does not warrant an investigation.
