by Joseph A. Califano Jr.

About the author: Joseph A. Califano Jr. is the chairman and president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York City.

A devastating tornado of substance abuse and addiction is tearing through the nation’s child welfare and family court systems leaving in its path a wreckage of abused and neglected children, turning social welfare agencies and courts on their heads and uprooting the traditional disposition to keep children with their natural parents.

There is no safe haven for these abused and neglected children of drug- and alcohol-abusing parents. They are the most vulnerable and endangered individuals in America.

That is the grim finding of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University’s (CASA) two-year exhaustive analysis of the available...