Is it or has it always been standard practice to test newborn's blood for drugs?? Just wondering.........

Why don't they test for nicotine?

probably a welfare baby of mixed race looks like the type , I imagine they test them all now , they have always done blood tests on newborns for abnormalities

What she did is so wrong in many,many ways, but how can you tell her type just by looking at her? There are people from very well to do families with the same problems. Drugs show no prejudices!

T-Bone, if only they'd been able to test for the "abnormalities" of predisposition towards ignorance and overt racial prejudice when your mama had you? I'd be willing to wager that this suspect (and she is just that for now considering that we have the presumption of innocence) was either on probation, drug court or some other kind of court supervision. The story said that it was DHR that made the determination that she'd knowingly used pot. There had to have been some articulable facts that gave them reasonable suspicion to test for drugs. There are HIPAA laws and constitutional prohibitions on general searches so I doubt they test all babies for drugs as a mandatory policy b/c there'd be a good bit of liability for the OBGYN's and Parkway. Have there ever been any credible studies showing conclusively whether or to what extent in utero exposure to THC harms an un-born child other than the ways cigarettes, which are legal (but not a good idea) to use while pregnant. It's also legal to use alcohol, which we know causes risks to the baby; and it is sometimes even legal to use methadone for opiate addiction maintenance while pregnant and the doctors slowly make the neonate baby taper down with morphine. I write all this to say1) this seems like overkill, and 2) I watch too much A&E.

@ Dan Halen. Good point re: predisposition towards ignorance and overt racial prejudice. You "T-Boned" that one. Good shot.

T-Bone is so ignorant with some of the comments he makes! Wonder what he is going to do when his daughter or granddaughter brings home a baby of a combined race....With his comments, wouldn't surprise me if his wife divorced him for a black man....that's why he is so hard on black people!!!