What Has Become Of The District's Crack Babies?

The headlines were dire, the predictions bleak: In 1989, experts were estimating that 1,500 babies a year in the District were being born to crack-addicted mothers. And countless numbers of the infants were being abandoned at birth, right in the hospital. Images of fragile, premature babies shaking off the effects of in utero exposure to cocaine dominated the nightly news. And the strung-out mom replaced the welfare mother as the public stereotype of inner-city Washington.

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