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Their plight inspires both pity and fear. Pity that they are the innocent victims of society's ills. Pity that the odds will be stacked against them at , home, on the playground and in school. Fear that they will grow into an unmanageable multitude of disturbed and disruptive youth. Fear that they will be a lost generation.
The dimensions of the tragedy are staggering. According to the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research and Education (NAPARE), about 1 out of every 10 newborns in the U.S. -- 375,000 a year -- is exposed in the womb to one or more illicit drugs. The most frequent ingredient in the mix is cocaine. In major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington many hospitals report that the percentage of newborns showing the effects of drugs is 20% or even higher.
The cost of dealing with these children is rapidly escalating. In California drug-exposed babies, many of whom are born prematurely, stay in the hospital almost five times as long as normal newborns (nine days, vs. two days) and their care is 13 times as expensive ($6,900, vs. $522). And that is only the beginning, since many of the crack kids are placed in foster care. In New York City annual placements of drug-affected babies run to 3,500, compared with 750 before the spread of crack. That brings the city's foster-care tab to about $795 million (up from $320 million in 1985). The New York State comptroller's office expects that New York City will spend $765 million over the next 10 years on special education for crack kids.
Among the most visible victims are black and other minority children born into crack-plagued ghettos. It is bad enough that the drug assaults children in the womb, but the injury is too often compounded after birth by an environment of neglect, poverty and violence. "I sometimes believe that babies are better protected before they are born than they are after," says Dr. Barry Zuckerman, head of the division of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Boston City Hospital.
Even after they give birth to drug-impaired children, many mothers go right on smoking crack. Melinda East, a former crack addict now in treatment in Long Beach, Calif., supported her habit as an often barefoot street prostitute. Her first baby was born with "the shakes," she says, but that did not turn her away from crack. She remembers selling milk and Pampers back to the grocery store for drug money.
Local governments often take crack kids away from still addicted mothers, but that does not guarantee stability for troubled children. Charlie, a five- year-old Los Angeles-area boy with severe behavioral problems, went through three foster homes before an elderly couple became his guardians. He seems to be making progress, but his prospects appear limited. He sometimes erupts into frenzied episodes of thrashing about, pulling his hair, biting and banging his head against a wall.