Study: Prenatal Cocaine Not So Bad on a Child

B O S T O N, March 27 -- We’ve seen it on ER. A young woman addicted to crack cocaine is brought to the emergency room. While there, she’s found to be pregnant. The nurse takes pity on her patient and tries to help her kick her addiction — for the baby’s sake. The social worker is then called in to prevent this “new” form of child abuse.

It has long been believed women who use cocaine during pregnancy endanger the lives of their babies. After all, it’s known that cocaine isn’t good for the person using it, so how could it not be bad for an unborn child?

A recent review, however, of scientific studies on the effects of cocaine use during pregnancy claims there is “no convincing evidence” that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with negative developmental effects in children 6 years and younger.

Poverty, not Cocaine To Blame

In fact, the researchers from Boston University’s schools of medicine and public health report many of the developmental problems commonly attributed to cocaine (problems with growth, language, mental ability, motor skills, behavior) may actually be caused by the much more commonly used drugs nicotine, alcohol, and marijuana.

“As rates of cocaine addiction soared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the media described these children as ‘doomed,’ a biological underclass of children unable to learn or love,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Deborah Frank, an associate professor of pediatrics at the BU School of Medicine and a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center. “That is simply not the case.

“In fact, the research suggests that poverty plays a much more destructive role in these children’s lives than prenatal cocaine exposure.”

The study, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed data from 36 studies conducted since 1984 that looked at the effects of prenatal cocaine exposure.