Having A Mother Using Cocaine Doesn't Hurt Kids Nearly As Much As Poverty & Violence

(This image is from the webpage of the Institute of Jewish Education.)

Back in the 1980's the use of cocaine, especially crack cocaine, was rampant (some even saying it was an epidemic). And one of the ways used to fight that drug use was to point out how bad the use of that drug was for women expecting a child. A whole mythology was built up around the idea of "crack babies" -- children born of mothers using cocaine, whose lives would be ruined because of that by having a lifetime of health and educational problems.

In 1989, Hallam Hurt, chair of neonatology at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, decided a scientific study was needed to define the risks of expectant mothers using cocaine. Hurt started a long-term study of this issue by choosing 224 near or full-term babies born in that hospital between 1989 and 1992. Half of those babies had mothers who had used cocaine while pregnant, and half had mothers who avoided drug use while pregnant.

Hurt had expected to find that the children born of cocaine users would exhibit significant problems in growing up. But an odd thing happened. Hurt found after studying those children for years that there was no significant difference between the children in the two different groups. The children with cocaine-using mothers showed no more health or educational problems than the children in the other group. The stories of "crack babies" having more problems turned out to be just a myth.

Now you may be thinking that this was just one study, and maybe that study had been flawed in one way or another. But two other similar studies were done -- one by Claire Coles, a psychiatry professor at Emory University, and the other by Deborah A Frank, a pediatrics professor at Boston University. And both those studies reached the same conclusion.

But this does not mean that nothing affects the health and education of children. All three of those studies found a couple of factors that significantly affected the well-being of children -- poverty and an early exposure to violence. These two problems affect the health and education of children more negatively than anything else.

Maybe it's time this nation stopped wasting huge amounts of money (more than a trillion dollars so far) on the failed "war on drugs", and start using that money to attack our real problems -- poverty and violence.

Drugs On The Beach

Somewhere today, there's an angry drug dealer -- a very angry drug dealer. That's because he's missing about 53 pounds of cocaine, wrapped in 24 separate packages (probably kilos). As kilos, the cocaine is worth about a half-million dollars. Broken down and sold on the street, it's worth millions.

But this 53 pounds will never be sold on the streets. That's because it's in the possession of the Jefferson County (Texas) Sheriff's Department.

Last Tuesday, some people were looking for "treasures" on the beach -- items that had been deposited on the beach by the waves. A few miles west of Sea Rim State Park, near Sabine Pass, they found the 24 packages of cocaine, and notified the authorities.

Police think the drugs might have been thrown overboard by a passing ship, because a Coast Guard cutter got a little too close.

We're Still Losing The "War On Drugs"

There is new evidence that we continue to lose the "war on drugs". Prior to his visit to the U.S. next Wednesday, Columbian President Alvaro Uribe admitted that a new White House survey shows that coca production in Columbia has risen again for the third year in a row.

The United States, in conjunction with Columbian authorities, have waged an agressive campaign to wipe out coca production in the country since 1999. However, coca production from 1999 through 2006 has risen about 27%. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy survey used satellite imagery to conclude that in 2006, coca production rose by about 8%.

In 2005, there were 355,831 acres of coca production. In 2006, the number of acres had grown to 385,484. Couple this with the fact that in the last year, cocaine in the U.S. has dropped in price and risen in purity, and it becomes pretty obvious that we are not winning this "war".

This is not the fault of our police agencies. They are doing the best they can. Last year here in Texas, the Department of Public Safety once again seized a record amount of cocaine and other drugs.

The fact is that this is a war that cannot be won. If people want drugs, there will always be someone to supply it to them. Wherever there is a demand, there will be a supply.

We need to attack this problem in a different way. We must realize that this is not a legal problem, but a medical and societal problem. Our money should be going into drug education and rehabilitation, rather than in policing efforts.

This is just not a problem that can be solved by our legal system.