Last week, the Utah Supreme Court voted 5-0 that having drugs in the home is NOT enough reason alone to remove children from the home. They ruled that drugs in the home must be ACCESSIBLE to the children in order to be reason enough to remove them.
Let’s think about this… How about if the parents are arrested for drug possession! Isn’t that the law? It seems to me that the children must be removed or some responsible person has to come watch them. Otherwise, they’d be left alone after the parents’ arrests and that would clearly be child negligence if the children are young.
The police know there are drugs in the home, but the parents are allowed to stay (and use those drugs, I presume), and the children can stay and watch them use drugs. Didn’t the government sponsor an ad campaign recently that said something like, “Parents who use drugs have kids who use drugs”?
Besides that, do you think parents who are under the influence of drugs will make the best decisions about putting them away and making them inaccessible to the children?
Where would you hide them that would make them inaccessible to children anyway? Apparently these judges never had children like mine. They can find anything I try to hide in the house. It’s the stuff I leave right under their nose that they can’t seem to find… Hmmm, maybe that’s the secret?
This is just one of those rulings that makes no sense at all to me.
