There was another warning 
about cocaine today.

Crack now has spread through 
almost every American city.

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

In the 1980s, the media sounded the alarm

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

and that it had an especially devastating 
effect

on pregnant women and their newborns.

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

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

They tend to be, what we call jittery.

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

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

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

are going to overwhelm every social 
service delivery system

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

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

and replaces it with a nightmare.

But were these infants really doomed?

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

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

at North Western Memorial Hospital
in Chicago

decided to study what 
he saw as a worrisome trend

among his pregnant patients, 
who had used cocaine.

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

they had higher rates of pre-maturity.

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

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

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

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

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

Cocaine was an epidemic.

I think that it was something 
that the media --

It became an exciting thing to talk about.

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

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

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

all over the country

and started hearing the term 
"crack babies".

Spotlight tonight, our investigative 
series on cocaine kids.

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

already addicted to cocaine.

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

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

Because the problem has appeared 
so suddenly,

there are few reliable statistics.

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

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

I had lots of people interviewing me.

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

runs the oldest program researching 
cocaine and the newborn.

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

and the new born, as heroin.

Chaznoff told reporters that cocaine 
exposure was causing some babies

to be born with brain damage.

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

These children are not normal 
in the sense that

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

and function in large groups of children.

Other researchers and doctors echo 
Chaznoff's conclusions

and a host of seemingly recognizable
symptoms took hold.

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

is they tend to be very tremulous 
and shaky.

Very fine kinds of tremors.

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

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

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

though equally startling conclusion 
about crack babies

based on her study of infant behavior 
at Emory University.

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

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

were premature babies.

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

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

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

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

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

maternal lifestyle is the cause of this,

social issues are the cause of this.

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

a national scare.

Cocaine.. Crack.

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

There's a whole lot of people

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

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

because that'll prevent them 
from doing bad things.

♪ (music playing) ♪

(door crashing) Police!

The American Agenda tonight 
poses this question:

What would you do about pregnant women 
who use drugs

and pass those drugs on to their babies?

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

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

I was at first stunned.

And then angry, that they would 
distort the information.

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

and used to bolster any kind of argument.

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

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

and use this kind of, 
not very accurate research,

to do so is very disturbing.

♪ (music playing) ♪

As the prosecutions continued, 
crack babies grew to toddlers.

No one knows how many there are,

or even how to best identify them.

But educators suspect that tens 
of thousands of crack kids

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

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

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

♪ (music playing) ♪

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

will be born.

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

to care for such babies.

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

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

I was supposed to be disruptive,
mentally unstable.

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

The initial hypothesis was 
that drug abuse

will lead to huge physical deformities,

huge mental deformities in children.

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

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

Almost three decades since Chaznoff's 
initial research,

which focused on just twenty three babies,

long term studies have found only subtle 
changes

in the brains of cocaine exposed
research subjects like Stone.

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

You're not seeing really broad scale 
severe developmental problems

as was predicted.

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

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

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

I am not going to make this an issue.

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

The paper was a very preliminary
kind of finding.

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

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

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

Doctor let's go to you on this question.

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

How does cocaine use effect newborns?

Well there's no questions that cocaine 
use during pregnancy

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

But, these effects are not devastating,

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

Over time, Chaznoff did distance himself

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

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

Which were completely cut out.

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

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

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

It was a drug that caused so much harm

among my generation and my parent's
generation.

Certainly cocaine was contributing 
to this problem,

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

I think people still believe 
the cocaine story,

but alcohol is much more 
of a problem than cocaine.

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

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

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

That really fit in with 
cultural stereotypes.

It is hard to get rid of those.

♪ (music playing) ♪