HTTP/1.0 200 OK Content-Type: text/html
Pubdate: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Page: A1 Copyright: 2005 The Sacramento Bee Contact: http://www.sacbee.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376 Note: Note: Does not publish letters from outside its circulation area. Author: Christina Jewett Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) NEW DRUG WAVE DELIVERS 'CRANK BABIES' Earlier Alarm Over Cocaine's Effects Could Limit Aid For Meth Abuse It was as if "crack babies" burst into the world with an alarm bell ringing in their cry. Researchers peered at them over clipboards with concern. The public stared at them on the evening news with shock. And the din of predictions about these babies, exposed to crack cocaine before they were born, doomed them to a fate that would never fully materialize. Now, the backlash against those exaggerations has left a resounding silence about a new generation of drug-exposed infants: "crank babies." As many as one in 10 babies born at UC Davis Medical Center between 1990 and 2002 had been exposed to methamphetamine - known as crank - according to a recent UC Davis study of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. Sacramento County numbers underscore the problem: Half of the babies that tested positive for drug exposure here last year had traces of methamphetamine and other amphetamines in their systems. Funding for studies on how those crank babies are faring is skimpy, researchers say, noting that they have been loath to generate a buzz that vilifies another generation of mothers. They've also shied away from stigmatizing the children and dredging up public cynicism over the crack baby uproar. But without such a buzz - and the resulting funding - county health and social workers worry about how to adequately cope with the crank babies at a particularly crucial moment - just as the former crack babies reach childbearing age. Research has shown drug-exposed babies are more susceptible to drug use as they grow up and to continuing the cycle with their own offspring. "We watched one group march through all of our systems," said Penelope Clarke, administrator of Sacramento's Countywide Services Agency. "Now we're seeing them reaching an age when they can have children of their own . The bottom line is we are seeing (drug-exposed) babies having babies and coming through the Child Protective Services system." The shift from infants exposed to crack to those exposed to crank can be documented in the handful of programs around the Sacramento region dedicated to helping mothers with drug problems. The Volunteers of America's Options for Recovery center in Del Paso Heights, for instance, was established in 1990 to support mothers coming clean from crack. Today about seven in 10 clients sign up to kick meth instead. Kari R. McGinnis Rals is one of the 24 women currently living there. Rals smoked meth while pregnant with her newborn son, Eddie Valencia - her third child - even after her fiance locked her in a room so she couldn't get high. She sought help only when he issued an ultimatum: put down the pipe or I'll take the children and leave. Now Rals tells her life story with a beginning (little girl in ruffled dress at church), a middle (when she last got high) and an end: Five months since her last high, she craves a very different kind of rush. "Today I can look forward to finger paints and parks, laying on the couch with all of the kids watching 'Scooby-Doo,' " she said. "I'm looking forward to having such a hard day and having my fiance put his arms around me when I sleep." Although Rals sought help, she came forward only after having smoked meth during the early months of her pregnancy. Sacramento County officials are about to launch an effort to identify drug-using women even earlier in their pregnancy, hopefully before any damage is done. But Paula Schmidt, the director of the Options for Recovery program - the only one in the county that houses mothers like Rals with their children - questions whether she can handle the influx of women discovered by a better early-screening program. Schmidt already has a perpetual waiting list for housing. "Where are we going to put the women?" she asked, throwing up her arms. "Where are the beds?" State funding targeted for drug-using women who are pregnant or have young children has fallen 27 percent in Sacramento County over the past 10 years, from $2.6 million in 1995 to $1.9 million in 2005, in inflation-adjusted dollars, based on figures from the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. Grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to learn more about drug-exposed babies rose gradually during most of the last decade, to about $14.1 million in 2004 for crack and crank research combined. But, even though the focus of the funding has shifted in recent years, far more still goes for crack baby studies - at a rate of $6 for every $1 spent for crank baby research last year. The overblown early claims of cocaine exposure also have overshadowed results of long-term research showing that problems do indeed endure for the former crack babies, the oldest of whom are now 21. A Brown University-based study that has looked at crack effects since 1993 in four cities recently concluded that cocaine exposure shortchanges a child of nearly five IQ points by age 7. Former crack babies also were found to be more impulsive and distractible than their peers, prone to short-term memory loss and aggression. Initial research on infant exposure to methamphetamine reveals that its damage could cause 4 1/2 times more birth defects than those found in a crack-exposed infant, Dr. Michael Sherman, a retired UC Davis neonatologist, discovered from a sample of Northern California babies. "We're just getting the tip of the iceberg of the severity of the problem," Sherman said. The alarm that started the crack baby uproar first was set off in 1985, when Dr. Ira Chasnoff, a Chicago researcher, published a startling report in the New England Journal of Medicine. A crack-exposed baby, Chasnoff reported, has a smaller head and lower birth weight, and is more irritable than other infants. Television stations broadcast images of stiff and shaky babies. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, whose work is carried in newspapers across the nation, declared the babies a "biological underclass." "When the earliest reports came out ... it was really sensational, slung all the way in one direction, and things were horrible," Chasnoff recalled. Chasnoff's initial study looked at 23 infants and did not control for addicts' alcohol use or their typically chaotic environments. In 1992, when his more extensive study reported that crack had little effect on a toddler's intelligence, the issue was dismissed. "It's like the flavor of the moment," Chasnoff said. "As the public concern drifted in other directions, this large population of children was left behind." Just as Chasnoff published his initial findings, outside of the media glare Penelope Scott began a 20-year dance with crack that would dash her hopes of nurturing her oldest children. Now off drugs for four years and raising her four children in Del Paso Heights, Scott tells her story in a mix of pop psychology and street slang, while driving an SUV and keeping a lieutenant's eye on her youngest daughter. She grew up on the streets of the Tenderloin District in San Francisco. She first smoked marijuana at 9, sold her body for sex at 14, ran with an abusive pimp and snorted cocaine. After giving birth to a daughter at 15, she was sure motherhood would change her. "After I had her, I finally had someone to love," she said. Three years later, Scott took her first hit off a crack pipe; she was hooked. She sold the drug to get more while pregnant in 1988. Baby Kaisha lived just two months. Within a decade, mothers like Scott would begin to see criminal penalties. Scott had three more children and engaged in a 15-year tug of war to retain custody, letting go whenever she was strung out or in prison on drug charges. By the time such punitive policies began to discourage mothers from seeking prenatal care, the media and public had already disavowed the detrimental effect crack had on a baby. Yet Scott believes she can see its mark in the distractibility of her daughter, now 14, who was born with crack in her bloodstream. She was quick to fight as a child, Scott said, though she is starting to mellow as a teen. Crack-exposed children act out in ways apparent in classrooms, said Dr. Chandice Covington of UCLA. She studies Detroit-area children, quizzing teachers about students' behavior. Researchers know which of the students have been exposed to crack before birth; teachers do not. And yet the teachers "were right on," Covington said. "The children they thought (had been exposed to cocaine) needed a lot of assistance getting through the day; they had hyperactivity and were extremely disorganized on tasks." While researchers are seeking to avoid the rush to judgment of crack babies, many predict the same attention deficits and distractibility for crank babies. Infants already are showing signs of trauma locally, said Sherman of UC Davis. He is completing a study of 6,555 babies born in Northern California since 1990 and admitted to neonatal intensive care units. About 560 were exposed to methamphetamine and 325 to cocaine, he said. The meth-and amphetamine-exposed babies were 4.5 times as likely as all California babies to have birth defects; crack babies were just 1.3 times as likely. Although babies admitted to intensive care are more prone to complications, Sherman believes his findings are still remarkable. The crank babies were more likely to have certain types of strokes and feeding problems, and to be born with their intestines outside of their bodies. "How could we let this get so out of hand?" Sherman asked. "We should start with junior high and high school education - take (students) through the (intensive care unit) nursery, show them broken babies, let them have a visual image of how serious the problem is." Schmidt sees its seriousness every day. She welcomed one woman into Volunteers of America who had taken methamphetamine at age 6. Her mother put it in a sippy cup so the child could stay up all night with her. "Our clients are very broken individuals," Schmidt said. "And, I must add, very brave individuals to say 'I'm willing to change my life.' " Rals, with fuzzy blond hair and darting hazel eyes, smoked meth during the first four months of her pregnancy, but says she sees none of its effect on the 7-pound, 11-ounce boy she delivered on March 25. She does see what counselors and researchers see: the cycle. She first tried meth in a rage at her mother's denial that there was drug use in the family. "I hated drugs, I hated drugs," she said. "I watched them tear my family apart." Rals' second binge lasted three weeks and left her looking like a gray ghost haunting Florin Road by the time her mother found her. From 18 to 21, she either smoked meth or craved it. But her son was born without a trace of meth in his system, she said, between kisses to the baby's forehead. Now, Rals plans to move into a Volunteers of America transitional housing complex where she will care for her infant with staff support. The ideal situation for mothers like Rals, researchers say, would be professional monitoring to pinpoint and address their toddlers' possible learning delays or behavior problems. But outside the halls of research hospitals, such long-term care is rare. "The bottom line is: Something can be done," said Chasnoff, who now works with drug-exposed children in a Chicago hospital. "We get good outcomes with our kids - they need early intervention, which is pretty rare. They are a population that very easily can be missed." DRUGS AND BIRTH DEFECTS Researchers have documented birth defects and other prob-lems among children born at the UC Davis neonatal intensive care unit from 1990 to 2002 who were exposed to drugs. 6,555: Number of babies studied from 1992 to 2002 563: Infants born exposed to methamphetamine 54: Number with a birth defect, or nearly 96 defects per 1,000 births, 4.5 times the average 325: Infants born exposed to cocaine 9: Number with a birth defect, or nearly 28 defects per 1,000 births, 1.3 times the average Note: The birth defect rate among all infants born in California is 21 major defects per 1,000 births. Source: Michael P. Sherman, Pediatrics, University of California, Davis; and Jan Sherman, School of Nursing, Family Health Care, University of California, San Francisco - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom