Crack Babies: A Tale From the Drug Wars - Retro Report

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.

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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 babies.

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?

♪ (music) ♪

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 new born
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 per-mature babies.

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

the tremoring arms and all of that,
that was pre-maturity.

You could have taken any pre-mature 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 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 effect 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 war.

It was a drug that caused so much harm

among my generation and my parents 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 fit in with cultural stereotypes.

It is hard to get rid of those.

♪ music playing ♪