What's new is the sheer volume of problems associated with crack and the viciousness of its impact on the children of users. What's terrible is the number of innocent young bystanders who've gotten hurt already in crack's deadly crossfire. They can be affected in more ways than one, because the risk that crack poses to children is really two-tiered. Some kids get hurt at the very outset of their lives, in the form of defects caused by prenatal exposure to the drug. Immediate problems can take the form of addiction, lowered birth weight, and other physical changes.
Problems can also tick away in the background, waiting to explode later in life.
Problems here can take the form of abandonment, neglect, or outright physical abuse, since the emotional lives of crack users can become so turbulent, violent, and unpredictable-and so centered on the use of crack. One big reason why is that crack is used by so many women. Statistics show that cocaine is used each year by hundreds of thousands of women of childbearing age in the United States. And while they're not all using crack, the hazards are the same. The true extent of fetal exposure to crack is harder to guess.