Crack Babies – The Epidemic That Wasn’t
by radioball - January 28, 2009 10:40pm
Yesterday I mentioned a bill designed to combat a drug problem that doesn’t exist. Somewhat related, if only due to the subject matter, the New York Times recently revisited the ‘epidemic’ of crack babies. If you grew up in the ’80’s you probably remember health care professionals and politicians warning of a future populated by zombies who were exposed to crack cocaine in the womb. Well guess what, it never happened.
When the use of crack cocaine became a nationwide epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, there were widespread fears that prenatal exposure to the drug would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Newspapers carried headlines like “Cocaine: A Vicious Assault on a Child,” “Crack’s Toll Among Babies: A Joyless View” and “Studies: Future Bleak for Crack Babies.”
But now researchers are systematically following children who were exposed to cocaine before birth, and their findings suggest that the encouraging stories of Ms. H.’s daughters are anything but unusual. So far, these scientists say, the long-term effects of such exposure on children’s brain development and behavior appear relatively small.
The point of course is not to figure in crack as part of a well balanced prenatal program, but the moral crusade which led to mothers loosing custody of their children and in some cases being jailed for drug use that may very well be less significant than fetal exposure to alcohol and tobacco.
