3 babies hooked on heroin or crack born every day

LogicSoDeveloped

LogicSoDeveloped

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Junkie mothers over the last five years have given birth to 5,500 children who were already hooked.

Department of Health statistics show the newborns all showed “neo-natal withdrawal symptoms” within the first few hours of life.
These are the same terrible symptoms experienced by hardened addicts when they come off drugs.

The babies need specialised care to cope with severe vomiting, seizures, fever and breathing difficulties.
They became hooked in the womb because their mums continue taking drugs during pregnancy.

Tory MP Nick de Bois — who uncovered the statistics through Parliamentary questions — said: “These figures are shocking.
“It is difficult to comprehend that in Britain we consistently have more than 1,000 babies born every year addicted to drugs.

“We are clearly failing to prevent the most vulnerable in society — and I cannot think of anyone more vulnerable than a newborn baby — from being harmed by drug use.”

Mr de Bois urged ministers to do more to get treatment for addicts to kick their habit. But he said they should also start giving drug dealers tougher sentences.

The statistics come only weeks after Deputy PM Nick Clegg called for an overhaul of drug laws. He told The Sun the war on drugs had been a spectacular failure.

The Commons home affairs select committee also called for ministers to consider de-criminalising drugs.

But critics warn that watering down the law could see more youngsters sucked into addiction. A total of 596 people were killed by heroin in England and Wales in 2011.

Former cop Norman Brennan, who campaigns to help victims of crime, hopes the figures will make Lib Dem leader Mr Clegg rethink his recent comments.

He said: “For 31 years as a police officer I saw first-hand how drugs destroyed the lives of users and their families — and devastated whole communities.

“I am fed up with the liberal elite talking about legalising drugs when they haven’t the first idea about the consequences or scale of the problem.”


Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...r-crack-are-born-every-day.html#ixzz2I4gn4U7d
 
most people seem to think that the mothers can just quit half way through a pregnancy and there won't be any problems. In many cases this leads to miscarriage. Nothing to do with politics or the liberal elite, that's just the way it is. Maybe not for crack but for opiates/benzos that is the case. The mothers have to stay on drugs and Drs know this.

article full of hysteria, sure to get lots of readers and old people saying, 'what has this world come to!!!'. fuck if drugs were legalized at least these mothers wouldnt feel stigmatized and ostrisized from society for admitting that they are addicts and that their babies need special care or will die. Prohibition causes more dead babies than legalization would.
 
3 babies hooked on heroin or crack born every day
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How is that possible??!
The same three babies, being born again and again every day?!

But seriously, it is really fucked up and sad when pregnant women don't care about their baby's (fetus') health.
However, this quote is also very true:
Prohibition causes more dead babies than legalization would.
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Is there any real evidence that babies are actually born with physical cocaine and/or heroin addictions? In the Consumer's Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs (1971) they came to the conclusion that there was no evidence that babies of heroin-addicted mothers (that were in fact pretty much just as healthy on average as the babies of non-addicts) could actually have a heroin addiction at birth. I wouldn't be surprised if these statistics are just tallied for every baby that is born of an addict mother and has some sort of issue (which could also happen to the baby of a non-addict).
 
So instead of helping junkies, treating it like a health issue, and minimizing harm, the article seems to imply that we should get tougher on drugs and send more people to prison. The same old cliches.
 
i was prescribed benzos and was able to slowly (.25 mg/ per week ) ween off safely during pregnancy (patience and listening to my body) ... however i was at a "therapeutic dose" (2 to 3 mg per day) not like 20 mg per day or anything

also i am a little confused at the concept of a baby "physically addicted" to cocaine/crack.... these arent physically addicting drugs... not that they are good for babies
 
^i think there's still some debate as to whether stimulants cause a true physical withdrawal or not, either way crack babies aren't a good thing. Since most people can quit stimulants without an issue a mother really shouldnt be smoking crack or meth or whatever during pregnancy, opiates are the exception here and i'd say benzos as well if t hey are abused. It's great that you were able to taper without issue during your pregnancy, i couldn't imagine being brought into this world addicted to benzos or opiates.

@S.J.B: yes there is evidence that babies born to mothers dependent on opiates suffer from opiate withdrawal upon birth. They cry in this really high pitched way and have many issues and require very special care.
 
If you are born addicted to heroin and go through withdrawal as an infant, will you remember anything about the ordeal? If you don't ever remember it, did you even experience it?
 
that's a philosophical question there lol i don't remember my circumcision and it didn't affect me negatively, in fact i quite prefer the look. Not really analogous to being born addicted to heroin or whatever else though.

but being born already dependent on opiates may affect the endogenous opiate system or the receptors or who knows, there are so many factors. Maybe the two are analogous as i don't experience as much pleasure as someone who wasn't circumcised as the dr or whoever did it (probably some shady guy in an alley) snipped off my pleasure receptors!
 
RobotRipping said:
@S.J.B: yes there is evidence that babies born to mothers dependent on opiates suffer from opiate withdrawal upon birth. They cry in this really high pitched way and have many issues and require very special care.
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From the quintessential Consumer's Union Report:

Effect on childbirth. It is often stated that pregnant addicts suffer "a high incidence of maternal complications such as toxemia, abruptio placentae, retained placenta, postpartum hemorrhage, prematurity by weight, breech delivery, and high neonatal morbidity and mortality." 39 This may be true. Such complications of pregnancy, however, are also associated with poverty, malnutrition, infection, and lack of prenatal care. No controlled studies have been made of the relative incidence of complications of pregnancy among addicted and nonaddicted women from the same neighborhood and socioeconomic status.

The findings of Drs. Blinick, Wallach, and Jerez cast some doubt on the conventional view. They studied 100 consecutive births to addicts at Beth Israel. Many of the mothers suffered from malnutrition, and 18 had positive blood tests for syphilis. Many earned their living by prostitution. Individual mothers also suffered from such conditions unfavorable to a healthy pregnancy as cancer (carcinoma in situ of the cervix), rheumatic fever, anemia, hepatitis and other forms of liver disease, epilepsy, and Class A diabetes. One addict had had ten babies; another was over forty years old; many had a history of using other drugs in addition to heroin. Almost all were heavy cigarette smokers. Two had had prior cesarean sections. Despite this concentration of unfavorable antecedent conditions, 88 of the 100 mothers gave uneventful birth to healthy babies. * The chief divergence from normal noted was low birth weight--- a condition known to be associated with poverty and with cigarette smoking. Breech deliveries were also frequent; these were probably associated with low birth weight and thus with cigarette smoking and poverty. "In this series, contrary to reports and expectations," the Beth Israel team summed up, "there have been few serious complications." 41



* The standard test for the condition of a baby at birth, the "one-minute Apgar test," rates such factors as breathing, crying, color, etc. The scale runs from 0 to 10. Eighty-nine of the 100 babies born to heroin addicts had high (8, 9, or 10) Apgar scores. 40





In a series of 230 babies born at Beth Israel to addicted mothers, only two had congenital defects 42 --- a rate which would be considered low in a group of nonaddicted mothers.

Effect on babies born to addicted mothers. Morphine and heroin, like alcohol and nicotine, are believed to pass through the placenta and reach the unborn baby. They are also believed to enter the mother's milk, so that a breast-fed baby is maintained on the drug and is weaned from the drug as it is weaned from the breast. There are numerous reports of withdrawal symptoms in babies who are not breast-fed; and at some hospitals opiates or other drugs are administered if a baby born to an addicted mother exhibits what appear to be opiate withdrawal symptoms.

There is not full agreement, however, on the conventional views summarized above. Thus Drs. Blinick, Wallach, and Jerez have some doubts concerning the passage of opiates to the fetus. "Placental transfer of narcotics prior to and during labor is poorly understood and the conclusions of experimentation are open to doubt," they report . 43

"The minute amounts of morphine that pass the placenta barrier," Dr. Blinick reported sometime later, "cannot be detected by ordinary biochemical methods." 44 In the Beth Israel series of 100 consecutive births to heroin addicts, it proved unnecessary to administer opiates to the babies. The many reports that such babies require opiates are all based on clinical judgment; no one has divided babies into two groups at random to see whether babies who receive opiates do better than babies who merely receive good care.

Dr. Saul Blatman, the pediatrician at Beth Israel in charge of the care of the babies in the Blinick-Wallach-Jerez sample, points out that many infants born to heroin addicts, like many born to other ill or poverty stricken mothers, suffer from low birth weight and other signs of immaturity. The symptoms commonly attributed to heroin "withdrawal" may thus in fact be due to immaturity of the nervous system. Indeed, "when we talk about symptomatology in the baby, we should not label these babies as addicted, because there is no indication that they are." Dr. Blatman similarly urges that the term "withdrawal symptoms" as applied to the babies of addicts "is an unsatisfactory term, which we should eliminate."

Dr. Blatman warns particularly against "standing orders" to administer opiates or other drugs to these babies; where standing orders are in effect, "many of these babies are often 'snowed under' by depressant medication starting soon after birth." While hyperirritable babies born to addicted mothers (like those born to nonaddicted mothers) may need medication--- phenobarbital, chlorpromazine, or in some instances paregoric (an opiate)--- the treatment should be individualized and matched to each baby's need. 45

In sum, many babies born to addicted mothers are born in excellent health; others suffer a handicap. How much of this handicap is traceable to the heroin and how much to malnutrition, infection, and other adverse factors has not been determined.
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Of course, there could be new evidence since 1971, but I have never seen it. Can you post your source?
 
my source is a documentary series aired on nat geo lol not very strong evidence, it may as well be hear say. I can look for some sources though, the documentary was specifically about mothers and opiates, can't remember what it was called but it was a series like drugs inc or some shit. Thanks for posting the above, i didn't think of how malnutrition would also play A HUGE role with most junkie mothers.
 
S.J.B. said:
From the quintessential Consumer's Union Report:



Of course, there could be new evidence since 1971, but I have never seen it. Can you post your source?
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lol I read through that whole thing and was really captivated, then I saw the 1971 thing. That's pretty ancient and there must be a ton of new research since then.
 
These studies are also only talking about these babies when they are babies.... i would be curious to know if there are consistently higher rates of autism or learning disabilities or severe behavioural problems developing as these "addicted newborns" get older
 
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