Imagine you’re going to have a baby. You have made plans — who will be there, how you expect it to go, what you’ll need to get the infant home. Now imagine the baby is born. You’re in your hospital bed, bonding with your newborn, when a doctor walks in and tells you that you have tested positive for drugs. But you know that’s wrong — it’s a false positive drug test result.

Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth, using pee-in-a-cup tests that are notoriously imprecise, leading to false positive drug test results. People who have eaten poppy seed bagels or taken over-the-counter heartburn or cold medications can test positive for meth or opiates.

The Marshall Project’s reporter Shoshana Walter, in collaboration with Reveal, investigated how hospitals nationwide are reporting parents to child welfare services over false positive drug test results. She digs into the cases of women who were separated from their babies after a false positive drug test result triggered a cascade of events they could not control.

The Devastating Impacts of Inaccurate Drug Test Results

Susan Horton had been a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years, and now — pregnant with her fifth child — she felt a hard-won confidence in herself as a mother.

Then she ate a salad from Costco.

It was her final meal before going to Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, in northern California, to give birth in August 2022. It had been an exhausting pregnancy. Her family had just moved houses, and Horton was still breastfeeding her toddler. Because of her teenage son’s heart condition, she remained wary of COVID-19 and avoided crowded places, even doctor’s offices. Now, already experiencing the clawing pangs of contractions, she pulled out a frozen pizza and a salad with creamy everything dressing, savoring the hush that fell over the house, the satisfying crunch of the poppy seeds as she ate.

Horton didn’t realize that she would be drug tested before her child’s birth. Or that the poppy seeds in her salad could trigger a false positive drug test result on a urine screen, the quick test that hospitals often use to check pregnant patients for illicit drugs. Many common foods and medications — from antacids to blood pressure and cold medicines — can prompt inaccurate drug test results.

Read the full article about false positive drug test results at The Marshall Project.