UK: Mother jailed for giving baby methadone

7zark7

7zark7

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[size=+1]Mother jailed for giving baby methadone[/size]
Susan Taylor rubbed her child's dummy in the heroin substitute to stop him crying, court heard

Alexandra Topping
The Guardian, Wednesday 9 June 2010

A woman who gave her baby a dose of a heroin substitute has been jailed for three years. Susan Taylor, 29, almost killed her 10-month-old son by rubbing his dummy in a measuring cup made for methadone in an attempt to stop him crying, the Edinburgh High Court of Justiciary heard.

Her partner, Lynn Cowan, was jailed for 10 months at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday after she admitted failing to tell medics the boy had been given methadone. The judge, Lord Bannatyne, sentenced Taylor on 11 September last year, but banned the reporting of the case until Cowan's case had been heard in court.

Taylor will begin her time after finishing a 26-month sentence for assault.

Sentencing Taylor last year, Lord Bannatyne said: "It is my view that there's a high degree of recklessness and culpability involved in the course of this offence."

Taylor had been prescribed the heroin substitute to deal with addiction. She called 999 when she discovered that the boy was not breathing on 22 November 2008. The baby, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had blue lips and vomit on his face. Paramedics said that Taylor appeared "disinterested" when they arrived at the Edinburgh flat. Advocate Depute Morag Jack, prosecuting, said: "They immediately noticed that he did not appear to be breathing apart from a single gasp for air. He was cold to touch, however there was a pulse."

The woman admitted that she had given the child methadone on a number of occasions. Doctors warned that he may suffer from behavioural and learning difficulties as a result.

Taylor who had a troubled upbringing, had "no concept" of how dangerous the substitute could be, the court heard.


Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2...ail?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
 
Doctors warned that he may suffer from behavioural and learning difficulties as a result.
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Really? I'm sure glad they elaborated why.


I'm fine with the sentence and maybe they should take the child out of her custody.
 
paragoric was used for much the same reason as this junkie mother's idiotic notion of parenting .

it certainly was in the medicine cabinet in many, many homes when i was a child .
 
Opium is sometimes still used in Turkey for this exact use. Quieting sick infants. I don't see anything wrong with it, used rarely and in extremely low doses.
 
Oh yeah great give your baby a drug that Nazi chemist discovered and first produced! Methadone is the worst of the worst of opioid drugs.. Anyone that is on methadone SHOULD know that this would be the last thing you want to give to a baby. What the hell is wrong with people in the world??

I mean how pissed would you be if you got addicted to opiates as a baby cause your mom gave you her methadone...my god if this child ever finds out about this when its older.... my god... it will never want to talk to his/her parents again. i know i wouldn.t


On the Afghanistan issue, the mothers in some villages blow opium smoke into their babies faces to calm them down and in the process getting them addicted to opiates. They also mix opium into the milk that they feed to their babies.. You can see a documentary about this on YouTube.com, i think its one of the "JourneyMan" things
 
JahRed24x said:
Oh yeah great give your baby a drug that Nazi chemist discovered and first produced!
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This is a logical fallacy called a reductio ad hitlerum. Just because a nazi made it, doesn't mean it's bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

But yeah, giving methadone to babies is definitly not cool. I can understand giving low dose opiates to children (a very low dose, and I would be uncomfortable doing it myself unless my doctor had given me a prescription to give to a baby that happened to be an opiate, which seems unlikely to me), but methadone isn't the best one, and it sounds like this mother almost killed her kid.
 
miss Taylor could have saved some methadone if just gave the little guy a cigarette. If you smoke a cig the next day after a meth dose, that high creeps right back up on ya

seriously though, that's pretty crazy. I've been on methadone and I love it, but I fear it at the same time, because it's so powerful. This babies pacifier was only dipped in it, and the dose was almost deadly
 
^isnt the real issue the fact that she dosed him with methadone? I aint know though..no opinion on this, or at least i dunno what i think.
 
On the one hand, she was criminally irresponsible and ignorant, and should be in jail for years and probably lose custody of her child.
On the other hand, she was trying to comfort the baby, using the "medicine" that she herself took and was comforted by.

If drug education was actually a priority, and instead of DARE bullshit we had real, solid information, cases such as this would be reduced.

I am wondering about how it would be to legalize drugs just as driving cars is legal.
People would need to get a license to use drugs. First, they would have 8 weed classes, for example, and then be given some weed to smoke. After 10 weed experiences (or 50), they would be allowed to take the mescaline classes, etc.

Or maybe a license to be a parent is a better idea.
 
LSDMDMA&8460505 said:
^isnt the real issue the fact that she dosed him with methadone?
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Not sure - surely the problem is that she overdosed the baby with methadone?
 
I'm going with you on that one zark :\

This is fucked up... And to make it worse I ended up being subconsciously "racist" for thinking to myself "This must be in Scotland" and it was =D **Is a cunt** ;)
But fuckin hell, it's crazy she would do this :X Sure, people used to give Laudanum to their kids back in the day, but that didn't have such a long half-life and receptor affinity making it very fuckin strong...
Besides, I think we've moved on in years from the 1800's haven't we? :|

Poor kid...
 
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7zark7 said:
Susan Taylor, 29, almost killed her 10-month-old son by rubbing his dummy in a measuring cup made for methadone in an attempt to stop him crying, the Edinburgh High Court of Justiciary heard.

Her partner, Lynn Cowan, was jailed for 10 months at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday after she admitted
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So I am correct to assume that this is a lesbien couple that adopted a baby? I am not familiar with the legality of same sex marriage and/or adoption in the UK. I was just wondering because why would you adopt if you can't handle a child.

It did seem like the child was only one of theirs though, so maybe she got pregnant while working the corners to support her drug habit.

Any insight, or other theories?
 
This reminds me of when my daughter was born, and she started teething, and was crying like crazy. My great-grandmother got out a bottle of rum, poured a bit on her finger, then rubbed it on my daughter's gums. She quit crying :)

This has been done for such a long time. While I do think that methadone was definitely overkill, her intentions were good.
 
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