#SONGS ABOUT CHILDREN GROWING UP AND THEN DYING FROM DRUGS CRACK#
I think the last time was I was in my AP bio classroom and my teacher was, like, she was talking somebody brought the conversation to babies who were exposed to drugs and she said that oh yeah, crack babies, they have horrible lives. I kind of make crack a lot of jokes and, like, I think they said that I had ADD and it was a little bit hurtful, but it was mostly just them trying to be funny. Not that I'm, like not out of, really, the ordinary, but they all kind of thought, like, I'm really funny. BECERIKLISOY: I'm a little bit eccentric. MARTIN: You mean in a mean way or in a funny way? BECERIKLISOY: Well, I told once I found out, I kind of told some of my friends, and they all kind of said, no wonder. And I just wondered if you had ever had heard any of that kind of conversation and if it affected any sense of who you were or what you wanted for yourself. And, you know, sometimes when kids find out something about another kid, they just use it to kind of hammer them with. MARTIN: Did you grow up hearing what was being described around kids who had been exposed to crack in utero? Were you ever exposed to any of that? Because, you know, kids can be mean. I just it was another it was something, it made me feel even empowered, really, because I was a normal kid. But it didn't really affect me that much. And we really didn't have much of an idea before that. BECERIKLISOY: Well, I found out when, really, one day she sat us down, me and my brother and she told us about her past and our past, really. MARTIN: I wanted to ask, how did you become aware that your mother had used when she was pregnant with you and some of the other kids? Can you just tell us a little bit about how that made you feel? You're heading off to Reed College with outstanding grades. You're graduating from high school this year. And so, yeah, I was clean the last trimester of my pregnancy because I finally found this place that would accept me while I was pregnant. I did find a shelter, though, that would take me. This was when I was living in Miami Beach, Florida. But did you think about it? Did you try? Was it something that worried about? For example, I can personally tell you of women whom I know who were addicted who are addicted to cigarettes or to nicotine and who managed to stop. So, even though I thought about stopping, it wasn't that easy. But one of the reasons I kept using during my first pregnancy was because, well, like, I always like to say if pregnancy was a cure for addiction, we could just go out and get all the female addicts pregnant, and, hey, no more addiction. You know, I didn't want to drink, I didn't want to smoke cigarettes, I didn't want to really do anything while I was pregnant. BARR: Well, the crack baby myth hadn't been, you know, advertised as much as it was later on. And I wanted to ask, at the time, did you think about or was there any discussion about the effect that drug use might have on your babies? You continue to speak openly about having smoked base cocaine and having used drugs during your pregnancy. CARL BELL (Psychiatry and Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago): Thank you. And I welcome you all and thank you all so much for speaking with us.ĭr. Carl Bell, a clinical professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Nisa is about to go off to college.Īlso here to provide expertise is Dr. Mary is an activist who discusses her past crack cocaine use while pregnant with Nisa. Joining us are Mary Barr and her daughter Nisa Beceriklisoy. And we're joined now by several people who know about this. But it turns out that children who are exposed to crack cocaine before birth are proving these worst case scenarios were all wrong. Two decades later, we're still learning about how drug and alcohol exposure by pregnant affects their children. John Silber, the former president of Boston University went so far as to say that "crack babies won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God," unquote. And if you think about it, that term tells you everything you need to know about the way children who are exposed to crack during the height of the epidemic were dismissed, demeaned and even feared.Īt the time there were all manner of pronouncements about how children who were exposed to crack in utero were destined to a life of physical and mental disability. Today we want to talk about so-called crack babies.
That's where we talk about issues that we sometimes avoid, often because of shame or fear. That's my Can I Just Tell You commentary and that's in just a few minutes.īut, first, it's time to go behind closed doors. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.Ĭoming up, I have a few thoughts about that aggressive immigration law in Arizona.
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