A mother has revealed how a salad from Costco led to a hellish ordeal that saw her newborn baby ripped away at birth.
Her nightmare began in August 2022 when Susan Horton was heavily pregnant ate the ready-made salad with poppy seeds.
When she gave birth the next morning at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in California, she was told she couldn’t take her healthy newborn daughter home.
Tests had detected opiates in the mother of five’s urine, which doctors interpreted as a sign she was abusing prescription drugs.
A horrified Mrs Horton pleaded with them that she had ‘never done drugs in my life’ and by process of elimination the test must have been caused by the poppy seeds – which contain opiates and are known to show up in drug tests. .
Susan Horton, pictured above with one of her children, had to fight for two weeks to get her youngest back after a faulty drug test
What followed was a humiliating two-week battle to get her daughter Hallie back.
Mrs. Horton had to leave the hospital without her child and was taken to juvenile court to prove that she was not a danger to her child.
She told me Reveal news: ‘He is [the doctor] like, “Well, your urine tested positive for opiates.” I said, “That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never done drugs in my life.”
‘They refused to take another sample. They took her away. I had to leave the hospital without her.
Your browser does not support iframes.
‘I felt very emotional and I was alone. I just gave birth the day before, I’m not sleeping, and I felt really confused.
“They had a unique piece of evidence that I had taken something and it was wrong.”
Her urine tested positive for the opiate called codeine, which is found in prescription cough medicine and sometimes in unwashed poppy seeds.
The substance is found in the seed pods of the plant and can end up on the seeds during harvest and subsequently result in a positive drug test.
Last year, the US military warned its soldiers not to eat poppy seed-covered bagels or muffins containing them because it could affect drug test results.
And in March last year, two mothers in New Jersey sued a hospital over their drug test results, saying the positive results were due to eating poppy seed bagels.
Online, the University of Florida Health System warns that while poppy seeds don’t contain nearly enough opiates to intoxicate someone, the “highly sensitive” nature of drug tests means the seeds can still cause a positive result.
Despite Mrs. Horton’s protests. the hospital alerted child protective services, who sent an officer for an interview.
The mother reveals her story to warn others of the dangers
When she refused to sign a security plan, a document that allowed the agency to interview her friends and family and search her home, they had a judge sign a document that began the process of removing her child.
The mother, who lives in Santa Rosa, was subsequently ordered to appear in juvenile court to assure the judge that she posed no danger to her child. After negotiations, she then also agreed to an inspection of her home and further tests before a judge dismissed the case and allowed her to take the baby home.
Ms Horton had no idea she would be drug tested after giving birth as there is a patchy system in place for doing this across the country.
In most cases, it is up to hospitals and doctors to perform drug tests on mothers – which is typically only done on babies born to mothers who are suspected of substance abuse or have a history of substance abuse.
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.
According to estimates, more than 35,000 cases of mothers testing positive for drugs have been reported in 2022, leading to more than 6,000 children being removed from their families.
Ms Horton said she went public with her story to warn others of the risks and to put more safety measures in place 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 took their role seriously.
They added that the hospital always conducts a “multi-faceted assessment before anyone files a report.”
A CPS official suggested to Reveal News that a positive drug test alone would not normally warrant an investigation.