Last summer, a frantic family called 911 for help. Their baby wasn’t breathing.
The month-old infant had been asleep with its father on a king size bed. Dad woke up just before 5 a.m. and knew that something was wrong: The baby hadn’t woken him up at the usual time overnight. The baby, who was born prematurely and had been asleep on its side, had its face pressed against the fluffy blanket it had been sleeping on.
Department of Human Services staff who investigated the child’s death determined the parents had not neglected their baby. They had just taken the infant to the doctor the day before because it was constipated. But the parents had no education on how to sleep safely with a child, they told a child protective services caseworker. Those best practices include placing a baby alone, on its back, on a firm, flat mattress.
The caseworkers noted one other factor, which the Department of Human Services says is a recurring and disturbing trend: Both parents had used marijuana before they fell asleep.
The parents said the drug hadn’t impacted their ability to parent or make good decisions. But they both also reported they “had difficulty being woken up during the night after using marijuana.”
The Oregon Department of Human Services and Sen. Lisa Reynolds of Portland, a pediatrician, are sounding the alarm about the dangers of using marijuana while taking care of babies or other vulnerable people. The state has investigated at least nine infant deaths that included “high risk sleep practices” in the past two years. In seven of those instances, it suspects parents had used marijuana alone or in addition to other substances.
Oregon’s child welfare director Aprille Flint-Gerner met with Reynolds last month and told the senator that four babies have died so far this year while their parents appear to have been using pot, Reynolds said, and “my jaw dropped.”
“We all probably would argue no one should be caring for an infant if you’re using fentanyl. But I think there’s probably still a lot of acceptance around smoking marijuana when you’re caring for an infant. And maybe that’s a myth we need to dispel,” Reynolds said last week during a hearing she convened in the Senate Committee on Early Childhood and Behavioral Health to talk about the issue.
Between 30 and 40 babies die in Oregon each year from sudden infant death syndrome and accidental suffocation or strangulation in bed, child welfare infant specialist Carmen Mims told the committee.
The state investigates only a sliver of those, if the child or their family members were already on the radar of the Department of Human Services because of an allegation of abuse. In the majority of infant deaths that the department investigates, it finds risky sleep practices – and in most of those cases, the child’s parent or guardian was also under the influence of drugs or alcohol, department data shows.
This year, the department has already opened investigations into seven infant deaths. That’s more than it investigated in all of 2024.
Risky sleep practices were present in at least four of those, Mims said – and marijuana was a “substance of concern” in all four. In one of those cases, the parent had also drunk alcohol.
In 2024, three of five infant sleep deaths involved a caregiver who had used marijuana, Mims said. That number was “pretty small” in earlier years, Mims told the committee, except that in 2019 marijuana was a factor in six of eight infant deaths that involved unsafe sleeping practices.
The human services department has boosted staff and family training about safe sleep practices, Deputy Child Welfare Director Lacey Andresen said, and it has used more than $200,000 in federal funds to give out safe infant beds. Recovery support staff work with parents who have substance use disorders and the state is part of a “nurture Oregon” pilot focused on support for infants with prenatal substance exposure, Andresen said.
It can be dangerous for parents to sleep on the same surface as their baby – and extra dangerous if they’ve been using drugs or legal substances like marijuana, alcohol or prescribed medication. The risk of sleep-related death is 10 times higher for babies who share a bed with someone who is fatigued or has used a substance or taken medications that make it harder for them to wake up, Andresen said. The risk of death while bed sharing is also higher for babies younger than 4 months or who were born preterm or with a low birth weight.
Reynolds said that when she raised the state’s statistics about infant death and parent marijuana use with doulas or other pediatricians, they’ve been as surprised and concerned as she was. Doctors get regular updates on measles outbreaks, Reynolds said, but the dangers associated with marijuana use seem to fly under the radar.
She doesn’t think it’s an issue unique to Oregon. But she also noted that research on the impacts of cannabis is still nascent since federal restrictions have historically made it challenging to study the drug.
Now Reynolds is debating how to launch a broader public health campaign to teach parents. She’s questioned whether dispensaries should be mandated to have pamphlets about the dangers of using marijuana while caregiving or whether warning labels need to be more explicit. She also plans to speak about the issue at an Oregon Pediatric Society meeting at the end of May.
Public campaigns have had an impact, Andresen told the committee. Most people know drinking alcohol is a risk to their unborn babies. When she brought her newborn son home from the hospital, the baby was dressed in a onesie that said “put me on my back,” for safe practices.
“This conversation about what is the impact of marijuana use specifically or other sedating substances when you’re making choices about parenting a very, very vulnerable child – I think it’s really important to highlight,” she said.
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