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There was another warning 
about cocaine today.

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Crack now has spread through 
almost every American city.

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It is a problem in Houston, Philadelphia, 
Kansas City, Tucson, and Sacramento.

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In the 1980s, the media sounded the alarm

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that a new drug, crack cocaine, 
was taking over American cities

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and that it had an especially devastating 
effect

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on pregnant women and their newborns.

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A new study says that babies born to women
who use cocaine during pregnancy

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are three times as likely to be born 
with birth defects.

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They tend to be, what we call jittery.

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There are very very high risk 
for Cerebral Palsy... Mental retardation.

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They are prone to hypertension, strokes, 
and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

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These children were the most expensive 
babies ever born in America.

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are going to overwhelm every social 
service delivery system

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that they come in contact with
throughout the rest of their lives.

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Drugs take away the dream from 
every child's heart,

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and replaces it with a nightmare.

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But were these infants really doomed?

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Nearly three decades later, what is 
the true legacy of the crack baby era?

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♪ (music) ♪

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In the early 1980s, Dr. Ira Chaznoff, 
a young researcher

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at North Western Memorial Hospital
in Chicago

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decided to study what 
he saw as a worrisome trend

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among his pregnant patients, 
who had used cocaine.

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Women were coming in and their babies 
were looking different when they were born

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they had higher rates of pre-maturity.

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And, they had higher rates of newborn 
seizures and other complications.

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A lot of the babies exposed to the cocaine
are quite small.

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We think that that's related to the use 
of this drug during pregnancy.

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We'd seen effects of alcohol and other 
substances on children

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so we were certainly open to the idea 
that this was a problem.

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Cocaine was an epidemic.

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I think that it was something 
that the media --

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It became an exciting thing to talk about.

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What you got? What you need? What you got?

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We call our broadcast, "48 Hours 
on Crack Street".

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Soon after our paper was published, within
days we were getting calls from media

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all over the country

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and started hearing the term 
"crack babies".

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Spotlight tonight, our investigative 
series on cocaine kids.

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Despite all the warnings a growing number 
of babies are being born

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already addicted to cocaine.

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As it got out into the world, 
it became this phenomenon.

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Twenty three babies were born 
to the cocaine using women in this study.

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Because the problem has appeared 
so suddenly,

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there are few reliable statistics.

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The number of so called cocaine babies, 
is growing at an astonishing rate.

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The number of babies born addicted 
has risen more than 500%.

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I had lots of people interviewing me.

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Dr. Ira Chaznoff, of Chicago's 
North Western Memorial Hospital

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runs the oldest program researching 
cocaine and the newborn.

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It appears that cocaine has just 
as devastating effect on pregnancy,

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and the new born, as heroin.

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Chaznoff told reporters that cocaine 
exposure was causing some babies

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to be born with brain damage.

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And that others were overwhelmed by even 
simple eye contact with the mother.

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These children are not normal 
in the sense that

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they are going to be able
to enter the classic school room


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and function in large groups of children.

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Other researchers and doctors echo 
Chaznoff's conclusions

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and a host of seemingly recognizable
symptoms took hold.

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One of the things that we see about 
babies who have been exposed to cocaine

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is they tend to be very tremulous 
and shaky.

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Very fine kinds of tremors.

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We look to see if we would find 
the effects that were reported.

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And we were saying, 
"Well...we aren't seeing this."

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As Chaznoff's star rose, Dr. Clair Kholes 
was reaching a different

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though equally startling conclusion 
about crack babies

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based on her study of infant behavior 
at Emory University.

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The effects didn't seem consistent 
with the action of the drug itself.

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Many of the children, who are 
the so-called classic cocaine babies,

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were premature babies.

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And the symptoms that were seen 
on the videos, on television.

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the tremoring arms and all of that, 
that was prematurity.

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You could have taken any premature baby 
and gotten the same image.

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I think that people got very focused 
on cocaine is the cause of this

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rather than thinking, substance abuse 
is the cause of this,

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maternal lifestyle is the cause of this,

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social issues are the cause of this.

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But Khole's findings didn't fit within 
the narrative of what had become

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a national scare.

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Cocaine.. Crack.

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If you use drugs while you are pregnant, 
your baby can die.

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There's a whole lot of people

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who feel that if you can just scare people
sufficiently about something

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that that's better than actually telling 
them the truth about something

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because that'll prevent them 
from doing bad things.

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♪ (music playing) ♪

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(door crashing) Police!

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The American Agenda tonight 
poses this question:

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What would you do about pregnant women 
who use drugs

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and pass those drugs on to their babies?

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By the late 1980s, Chaznoff's findings 
were being used to justify cases

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charging pregnant cocaine users as child
abusers, drug dealers, and killers.

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I was at first stunned.

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And then angry, that they would 
distort the information.

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That's when I started realizing how 
a lot of this can be taken out of context

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and used to bolster any kind of argument.

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People may have felt that 
they were doing the right thing.

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But I mean the idea that one 
would prosecute a pregnant women

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and use this kind of, 
not very accurate research,

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to do so is very disturbing.

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♪ (music playing) ♪

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As the prosecutions continued, 
crack babies grew to toddlers.

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No one knows how many there are,

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or even how to best identify them.

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But educators suspect that tens 
of thousands of crack kids

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are in kindergartens in inner cities 
in suburbia, even in small town America.

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It now threatens to create an entirely 
new underclass of children,

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unable to care for themselves, 
of infants born to suffer.

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♪ (music playing) ♪

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In the United States this year, 
at least a hundred thousand crack babies

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will be born.

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Today the government said it will cost 
5 billion dollars a year

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to care for such babies.

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And money doesn't begin 
to tell the whole story.

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I'm supposed to be a victim 
of that crack era.

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I was supposed to be disruptive,
mentally unstable.

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I wasn't supposed to reach the point 
where I am now.

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The initial hypothesis was 
that drug abuse


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will lead to huge physical deformities,

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huge mental deformities in children.

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And, you know, in myself, I didn't see 
any of those things.

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So, it would be easy for me to believe 
that, that science doesn't hold true.

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Almost three decades since Chaznoff's 
initial research,

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which focused on just twenty three babies,

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long term studies have found only subtle 
changes

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in the brains of cocaine exposed
research subjects like Stone.

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There is no particular evidence of 
this social, emotional deficit.

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You're not seeing really broad scale 
severe developmental problems

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as was predicted.

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The schools have not been overwhelmed 
by the flood of cocaine exposed children.

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In fact, Stone became the first in her 
family to graduate from college.

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In learning that I had been exposed, 
I kinda told myself

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I am not going to make this an issue.

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Whatever I have to do to get around 
what the effects may be, I'll do that.

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The paper was a very preliminary
kind of finding.

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And it really shouldn't have been 
generalized, to the extent it was.

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Which I believe Dr. Chaznoff eventually 
came to himself and said

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that he felt that this didn't really 
represent the whole of the situation.

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Doctor let's go to you on this question.

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You've studied this, perhaps 
one of the first people to study this.

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How does cocaine use effect newborns?

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Well there's no questions that cocaine 
use during pregnancy

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has some real effects on the unborn, 
and on the newborn child.

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But, these effects are not devastating,

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and can be addressed through treatment 
for the pregnant woman and for the child.

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Over time, Chaznoff did distance himself

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from some of the extreme pronouncements 
he was quoted as making in the early days.

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I probably talked too much, 
or gave long winded explanations.

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Which were completely cut out.

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It was one of those feelings where 
you just feel completely out of control.

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But the hysteria that followed his initial
research had already taken its toll.

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It wasn't even a natural 
disaster or a war.

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It was a drug that caused so much harm

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among my generation and my parent's
generation.

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Certainly cocaine was contributing 
to this problem,

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but, they got very focused on it 
as the only sole cause of it.

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I think people still believe 
the cocaine story,

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but alcohol is much more 
of a problem than cocaine.

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Because there is much more alcohol used 
and it has much more severe effects.

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I think if you'd say something three times
out loud, people take it as fact.

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And also, I think there are certain 
ideas that people want to believe.

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That really fit in with 
cultural stereotypes.

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It is hard to get rid of those.

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♪ (music playing) ♪