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From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 15:49:48 -0800
Subject: [spiritof1848] FYI Poverty More Harmful to Children than exp to cocaine
To: [log in to unmask]
From: <[log in to unmask]>
The Week Online with DRCNet, Issue #118 - Dec. 10, 1999
A Publication of the Drug Reform Coordination Network
5. Study Finds Poverty More Harmful to Children than Pre-
Natal Exposure to Cocaine
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/118.html#prenatalexposure
A report in the December issue of the Journal of
Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics concludes that the
negative effects of poverty far outweigh the effects of
fetal exposure to cocaine in terms of childhood development.
The report follows a study of more than two hundred children
from birth through four-and-a-half years, half of whose
mothers had been frequent users of cocaine during pregnancy,
and all of whom came from low-income families.
"The findings are overwhelming and persistent -- there may
be a drug effect, but it's totally overshadowed by poverty,"
Dr. Hallam Hurt, the chairman of the division of neonatology
at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and
the study's lead author, told a Reuters reporter.
The study found that all of the children tested below the
norm, based on studies of mixed-income children, but that
the cocaine-exposed children's scores were not significantly
different from those of the others.
"A decade ago, the cocaine-exposed child was stereotyped as
being neurologically crippled -- trembling in a corner and
irreparably damaged. But this is unequivocally not the case.
And furthermore, the inner-city child who has had no drug
exposure at all is doing no better than the child labeled a
'crack-baby,'" Hurt said.
This is not news to many who have worked on the front lines
in poverty-stricken communities, according to Lynn Paltrow,
the program director of National Advocates for Pregnant
Women and an attorney who has defended women against "crack
mother" laws that seek to imprison pregnant women and
mothers who test positive for drugs. "For ten years, this
is exactly what I've been hearing from drug treatment
programs, like Operation PAR in Florida," she told The Week
Online. "It's no coincidence that the alleged epidemic of
crack babies occurred after eight years of Reagan-era budget
cuts," she added.
Nevertheless, the myth of the "crack baby" has been a
persistent one. And for that reason, Paltrow said, studies
like Hurt's are crucial. "It's extraordinarily important to
have careful, well-constructed research to support what many
of us who are opposed to the War on Drugs -- and Women and
Children -- have long suspected," she said.
Phillip Coffin, a research associate at the Lindesmith
Center, agrees. "This is exactly the sort of research that
should have been done years ago," he said. "If we took the
time to compare the effects of poverty, and hunger, and
spousal abuse, and discrimination, and lack of good medical
care to the effects of prenatal drug exposure, we'd find the
former would almost always greatly outweigh the latter.
Hurt has done an extraordinary, high-quality study."
You can read Phil Coffin's research brief on "Cocaine and
Pregnancy," as well as writing by Lynn Paltrow and others on
the subject of women and drugs, on the Lindesmith Center web
site at <http://www.lindesmith.org>.
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Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
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