Jacob Sullum: Don’t Put Meth Moms in Jail

Given the link between alcohol consumption during
pregnancy and birth defects, should expectant mothers who drink be
arrested for assault? If not, it is hard to see why Mallory Loyola
was.

Loyola, who was arrested in July after giving birth to a baby
girl who tested positive for amphetamine, is the first person to be
charged under a new Tennessee law that criminalizes drug
consumption by pregnant women. The law, ostensibly aimed at
protecting children, is really about punishing what a chief sponsor
described as “the worst of the worst”: women who not only consume
arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants but do so at a time when they
are supposed to be thinking only of their babies.

But as Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum explains, there is no
clear link between the drug Loyola consumed and birth defects in
humans. The nonsensical rhetoric about addicted babies is aimed at
concealing the fact that the law, like drug prohibition generally,
seeks to punish people for actions that violate no one’s
rights.

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