Is Foster Care Riskier Than Smoking Pot?

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Over a month ago, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services took David Brill – a fifteen-year old boy – from his parents and placed him in a group home – a form of foster care run by strangers to the child.  Why did the Division proceed with such a drastic step?  It did so because David’s parents made a medical decision to allow him to use marijuana to help stop life-threatening seizures.  


The Brills wanted David to have a normal life, and conventional medicines were not reducing his seizures.  So they turned to medical marijuana, which recent evidence suggests might be an effective treatment for children with seizures.  A 2017 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found a 40% drop in seizures for children who used marijuana.  The principal investigator of the study concluded that “the study clearly establishes cannabidiol as an effective anti-seizure drug for this disorder.”  In fact, just this past April, an advisory panel recommended that the FDA approve an epilepsy medication with an active ingredient found in cannabis.  So the decision by the Brills was informed by emerging science, and certainly not outside the scope of the types of decisions good parents make.  Who amongst us wouldn’t take this chance, especially when nothing else seemed to work?  Before being taken from his family, David’s seizures had stopped for 71 days.

Yet Georgia doesn’t allow anyone to smoke marijuana for medical treatment.  So as a result of the Brill’s decision, David is in foster care.  While evidence suggests that marijuana might be helpful for children like him, the evidence is clear that foster care is not.  Research demonstrates that removing a child from his parents is a toxic intervention, which, while sometimes necessary, has drastic, life-long consequences.  The removal itself creates an ambiguous loss in the lives of children, who do not know where they will live, when they will see their families, and if they will ever return home.  These children are taken from their communities, separated from siblings and relatives, and forced to attend different schools.  

All too often, children in foster care bounce from home to home during their time in care, living with strangers.  A recent study indicated that 14% of youth in foster care self-reported being assaulted while in the system.  And children raised by the system who age out of foster care face dire consequences, including high rates of unemployment, homelessness, and incarceration.  Given these dynamics, it is unsurprising that after studying outcome data involving 15,000 children, Joseph Doyle – an MIT economist – concluded that children taken from their parents and placed in foster care fared far worse than similarly situated children who remained at home. 

The research shows that foster care is a dangerous intervention that must only be used sparingly.  Certainly serious cases, typically involving sexual or physical abuse, warrant the protection of children by the system.  But, if parents make well-informed decisions that they believe are necessary for their child’s health, the State has no reason to intervene.  Rather, it should stand in kinship with them, offer them support, and respect the heavy burden they carry caring for children with special needs.  

Unfortunately here, the State chose a different approach.  It stood in judgment of the Brills, punishing them for their decision.  In doing so, it is inflicting a harm on David far worse than anything caused by smoking marijuana to stop seizures.

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