Dr. Stephen Patrick on drug testing new mothers

In this web exclusive, Dr. Stephen Patrick, a newborn ICU doctor and researcher on how the opioid crisis affects pregnant women and infants, talks with CBS News' Erin Moriarty about what happens after a mother tests positive for a substance during pregnancy. Patrick argues that automatically referring mothers to child welfare or law enforcement over a single drug test - even for substances like marijuana, which are legal in much of the country - can create more harm than it prevents: driving women away from prenatal care, disproportionately affecting Black and Native American families, and separating moms from newborns without evidence of harm.

• Aug 9
• 10:48

How THC tests have landed new mothers onto child abuse registries

In more than 40 states, marijuana is now a legal method of relieving pain. But in Idaho, more than a thousand new mothers have ended up on a child abuse registry after testing positive for THC – a chemical found in marijuana – following childbirth. In other states, women have even been sent to jail. The findings of a joint investigation by "CBS Sunday Morning" and the Marshall Project raise hard questions about who gets punished, and who doesn't. Erin Moriarty reports. [This story was produced in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.]

• Aug 9
• 11:51

8/9: Sunday Morning

Hosted by Seth Doane. Featured: Saving a candlepin bowling alley; THC tests jeopardize young mothers; writer Gay Talese; actor Tim Curry; protecting the habitat of Venus fly traps; and the world's largest truck stop.

• Aug 9
• 1:02:00

Tales from Gay Talese

For more than six decades, Gay Talese has been a celebrated legend among writers and reporters – a leading practitioner of the "New Journalism." At 94, he talks with New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh of a career writing about the famous and not-so-famous (including mobsters, aging sports figures and nudists), and why his renowned 1966 Esquire article about Frank Sinatra didn't require his actually talking to the Chairman of the Board.

• Aug 9
• 7:43

Science

Protecting the Venus fly trap

The carnivorous Venus fly trap is native to the Carolinas, but its population is dwindling due to loss of habitat. Correspondent Seth Doane talks with botanist Julie Moore, who has spent much of her life helping to save these remarkable plants; and with Damon Waitt, director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, who discusses the unusual traits of a species that Charles Darwin called the most interesting plant in the world. (Originally broadcast April 26, 2026.)

• Aug 9
• 5:54