Crack Babies: A Tale From the Drug Wars - Retro Report
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0:05 - 0:07There was another warning about cocaine today.
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0:07 - 0:10The fact now, that it has spread through every American city.
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0:10 - 0:18It is a problem in Houston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Tucson, and Sacramento.
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0:18 - 0:21In the 1980s, the media sounded the alarm.
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0:21 - 0:25That a new drug, crack cocaine, was taking over American cities.
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0:25 - 0:30And, that it had an especially devastating effect on pregnant women and their newborns.
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0:30 - 0:35A new study says, the babies born to women who use cocaine, during pregnancy,..
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0:35 - 0:38..are three times as likely to be born with birth defects.
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0:38 - 0:40They tend to be, what we call jittery.
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0:40 - 0:44They are very very high risk for Cerebral Palsy...mental retardation.
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0:44 - 0:48They are prone to hypertension, strokes, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
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0:48 - 0:53These children were the most expensive babies ever born in America.
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0:53 - 0:57They are going to overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come into contact with.
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0:57 - 0:59Throughout the rest of their lives.
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0:59 - 1:05Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart, and replaces it with a nightmare.
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1:05 - 1:06But were these infants really doomed?
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1:06 - 1:11Nearly three decades later, what is the true legacy of the crack baby era?
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1:11 - 1:22(music playing)
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1:22 - 1:26In the early 1980s, Dr. Ira Chaznoff, a young researcher.
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1:26 - 1:29At Western Memorial Hospital in Chicago,...
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1:29 - 1:31decided to study what he saw as a worrisome trend.
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1:31 - 1:35Among his pregnant patients, who had used crack cocaine.
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1:35 - 1:39Women were coming in, and their babies were looking different when they were born.
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1:39 - 1:43They had higher rates of per-maturity.
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1:43 - 1:48And, they had higher rates of new born seizures and other complications.
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1:48 - 1:53A lot of the babies exposed to the cocaine are quite small.
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1:53 - 1:55We think, that is related to the use of this drug during pregnancy.
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1:55 - 2:01We'd seen effects of alcohol, and other substances, on children.
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2:01 - 2:05So we were certainly open, to the idea, that this was a problem.
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2:05 - 2:07Cocaine was an epidemic.
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2:07 - 2:17I think that it was a, something that the media, it became an exciting thing to talk about.
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2:17 - 2:24We call our broadcast, "48 Hours on Crack Street".
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2:24 - 2:31Soon after our paper was published, within days we were getting calls from media all over the country.
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2:31 - 2:33We started hearing the term "crack babies".
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2:33 - 2:36Spotlight tonight, our investigative series on cocaine kids.
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2:36 - 2:41Despite all the warnings, the growing number, of babies, are being born all over addicted to cocaine.
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2:41 - 2:46As it got out into the world, it became this phenomenon.
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2:46 - 2:51Twenty three babies were born to the cocaine using women in this study.
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2:51 - 2:55Because the problem has appeared so suddenly, there are few reliable statistics.
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2:55 - 3:00The number of so called cocaine babies, is growing at an astonishing rate.
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3:00 - 3:04The number of babies born addicted has risen %500 percent.
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3:04 - 3:06I had lots of people interviewing me.
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3:06 - 3:09Dr. Ira Chaznoff, of Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital,..
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3:09 - 3:13..runs the oldest program researching cocaine and the newborn.
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3:13 - 3:22It appears, that cocaine has just as devastating effect on pregnancy, and the new born, as heroine.
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3:22 - 3:27Chaznoff told reporters, that cocaine exposure was causing some babies to be born with brain damage.
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3:27 - 3:32And that others, were overwhelmed by even simple eye contact with the mother.
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3:32 - 3:34These children are not normal.
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3:34 - 3:39In the sense, that they are going to be able to enter the classic schoolroom...
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3:39 - 3:43...and function in large groups of children.
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3:43 - 3:46Other researchers, and doctors, echo Chaznoff's conclusions.
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3:46 - 3:50And a host of seemingly recognizable symptoms took hold.
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3:50 - 3:54One of the things that we see, about babies that have been exposed to cocaine,...
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3:54 - 3:55..is they tend to be very tremulous and shaky.
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3:55 - 3:59Very fine kinds of tremors.
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3:59 - 4:02We look to see if we would find the effects that were reported.
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4:02 - 4:05And we were saying, "Well...we are not seeing this."
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4:05 - 4:09As Chaznoff's star rose, Dr. Clair Kholes was reaching a different..
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4:09 - 4:13..though equally startling conclusion about crack babies.
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4:13 - 4:16Based on her study, of infant behavior, at Marie University.
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4:16 - 4:20The effects didn't seem consistent, with the action of the drug itself.
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4:20 - 4:26Many of the children, who are the so called classic cocaine babies, were per-mature babies.
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4:26 - 4:31And the symptoms, that were seen on the videos on television,...
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4:31 - 4:35...the tremoring arms and all of that, that was per-maturity.
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4:35 - 4:39You could have taken any pre-mature baby and gotten the same image.
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4:39 - 4:42I think that people got very focused on cocaine is the cause of this.
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4:42 - 4:46Rather than thinking, that substance abuse is the cause of this.
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4:46 - 4:48Maternal lifestyle is the cause of this.
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4:48 - 4:51Social issues are the cause of this.
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4:51 - 4:56Khole's findings, didn't fit within the narrative of what had become a national scare.
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4:56 -Cocaine.. crack.
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Not SyncedIf you use drugs, while you are pregnant, your baby can die.
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Not SyncedThere are a whole lot of people.
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Not SyncedWho feel, that if you can just scare people sufficiently,..
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Not Synced..that is better than telling them the truth about something.
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Not SyncedBecause it will prevent them from doing bad things.
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Not SyncedThe American agenda tonight poses this question.
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Not SyncedWhat will you do?
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Not SyncedAbout pregnant women who use drugs and pass those drugs on to their babies?
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Not SyncedBy the late 1980s...
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Not SyncedChaznoff's findings were being used to justify cases.
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Not SyncedCharging pregnant cocaine users as child abusers, drug dealers, and killers.
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Not SyncedI was at first stunned.
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Not SyncedAnd then angry, that they would distort the information.
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Not SyncedThat's when I started realizing, how a lot of this can be taken out of context, and used to bolster any kind of argument.
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Not SyncedPeople may have felt that they were doing the right thing.
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Not SyncedBut I mean the idea, that one would prosecute a pregnant women,...
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Not Synced..and use this kind of not very accurate research to do so.
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Not SyncedIs very disturbing.
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Not SyncedAs the prosecutions continued, crack babies grew to toddlers.
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Not SyncedNo one knows how many there are.
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Not SyncedOr, even how to best identify them.
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Not SyncedBut educators suspect, that tens of thousands of crack kids are in kindergartens in inner cities.
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Not SyncedEven in small town America.
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Not SyncedIt now threatens to create an entirely new underclass of children.
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Not SyncedUnable to care for themselves. Of infants born to suffer.
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Not SyncedIn the United States this year, at least a hundred thousand crack babies will be born.
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Not SyncedToday the government said, it will cost 5 billion dollars a year to care for such babies.
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Not SyncedAnd, money doesn't begin to tell the whole story.
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Not SyncedI'm supposed to be a victim of that crack era.
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Not SyncedI was supposed to be disruptive..mentally unstable.
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Not SyncedI wasn't supposed to reach the point where I am now.
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Not SyncedThe initial hypothesis, was that drug abuse will lead to physical deformities..
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Not Synced...huge mental deformities in children.
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Not SyncedI didn
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Not SyncedIn myself, I didn't see any of those things.
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Not SyncedSo, it would be easy for me to believe that, that science doesn't hold true.
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Not SyncedAlmost three decades, since Chaznoff's research, which focused on just twenty three babies.
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Not SyncedLong term studies, have only found only suddle changes in the brains of cocaine cocaine expose research subjects.
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Not SyncedLike Stone.
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Not SyncedThere is no particular evidence of this social, or emotional, deficit.
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Not SyncedYou're not seeing really broad scales of severe developmental problems.
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Not SyncedAs was predicted.
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Not SyncedThe schools have not been overwhelmed by the flood of cocaine exposed children.
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Not SyncedIn fact, Stone became the first in her family to graduate from college.
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Not SyncedIn learning that I had been exposed, I kinda told myself that I am not going to make this an issue.
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Not SyncedWhatever I have to do to get around, what the effects may be, i'll do that.
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Not SyncedThe paper was a preliminary kind of finding.
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Not SyncedIt really should not have been generalized, to the extent that it was.
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Not SyncedWhich I believe Dr. Chaznoff, eventually came to himself and said,...
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Not Synced...that this really didn't represent the whole of the situation.
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Not SyncedDoctor let's go to you on this question.
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Not SyncedYou've studied this.
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Not SyncedPerhaps one of the first people to study this.
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Not SyncedHow does cocaine use effect newborns?
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Not SyncedWell there is no questions that, cocaine use during pregnancy,...
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Not Synced...has real effects of the unborn, and the newborn, child.
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Not SyncedBut, these effect are not devastating.
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Not SyncedAnd, can be addressed through treatment for the pregnant woman and for the child.
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Not SyncedOver time, Chaznoff did distance himself.
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Not SyncedFrom the extreme pronouncements he was quoted making in the early days.
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Not SyncedI probably talked too much, or gave long winded explanations.
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Not SyncedWhich were completely cut out.
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Not SyncedIt was one of those feelings, where you just feel completely out of control.
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Not SyncedBut the hysteria, that followed his initial research, had already taken its toll.
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Not SyncedIt wasn't even a natural disaster or war.
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Not SyncedIt was a drug that caused so much harm.
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Not SyncedAmong my generation and my parents generation.
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Not SyncedCertainly cocaine was contributing to this problem.
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Not SyncedThey got very focused on it as the only sole cause of it.
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Not SyncedI think people still believe that cocaine story, but alcohol is much more of a problem than cocaine.
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Not SyncedBecause there is much more alcohol abuse, and it has much more serious effects.
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Not SyncedI think if you'd say something three times, out loud, that people take it as fact.
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Not SyncedAlso, there are certain ideas that people want to believe.
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Not SyncedThat fit in with cultural stereotypes.
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Not SyncedIt is hard to get rid of those.
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Not Synced(music playing)
- Title:
- Crack Babies: A Tale From the Drug Wars - Retro Report
- Description:
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Retro Report: In the 1980s, many government officials, scientists and journalists warned that the country would be plagued by a generation of "crack babies." They were wrong.
Read the story here: http://nyti.ms/166g5dg
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- Project:
- BATCH 2 (1.31.17)
- Duration:
- 10:10
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