Day: 03/19/2015

3/10/2015, Crack baby myth goes up in smoke

http://www.drugwarrant.com/2015/03/just-a-reminder-about-drug-scares/

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2015/3/10/crack-baby-myth.html

Drakewood’s mother, Karen Drakewood, was also worried about how her drug use may have harmed her child. She jumped at the chance to enroll her newborn in a study, which followed more than 200 crack babies for more than two decades. Completed just over a year ago, that study would turn the conventional wisdom about crack babies on its head…

But after 25 years of research, she found there were no differences in the health and life outcomes between babies exposed to crack and those who weren’t. The crack baby was a myth. What did make a difference for those babies, however, was poverty and violence…

http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/03/14/generation-called-crack-babies-now-grown-showing-hysteria-1990s-racist-myth/

3/14/2015, Generation of So-Called ‘Crack Babies’ Are Now Grown Up and Demonstrating the Hysteria of the 1990s Was a Racist Myth

As with the other children Hurt followed, Jaimee Drakewood is doing extremely well, healthwise, and is about to receive her bachelor’s degree from Tuskegee University in Alabama. Her mother has been clean for more than 10 years and now works for Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections…

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0122-pregnancy-opioids.html

More than a third of reproductive-aged women enrolled in Medicaid, and more than a quarter of those with private insurance, filled a prescription for an opioid pain medication each year during 2008-2012, according to a report in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)…

Previous studies of opioid use in pregnancy suggest these medications might increase the risk of neural tube defects (major defects of the baby’s brain and spine), congenital heart defects and gastroschisis (a defect of the baby’s abdominal wall). There is also a risk of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) from exposure to medications such as opioids in pregnancy. NAS is when a newborn experiences symptoms of withdrawal from medications or drugs taken by a mother during pregnancy…