How the ‘Crack Baby’ Myth Criminalized Black Women and Destroyed Families

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy, director Stanley Nelson’s latest documentary, is both a reminder and an eye-opening account of the horrors of crack and the country’s push to criminalize Black people struggling with drug addiction. Streaming on Netflix, it covers a lot of ground. Drawing from anecdotes from the Black and Brown people impacted by the “war on drugs” and archival footage from the 1980s and ’90s, the doc illustrates the ties between Reagan’s White House to Nicaragua and how a party drug for the elite was weaponized by police and the medical field to separate Black mothers from their newborns. The latter gave way to the myth of “crack babies,” a narrative that created robust fears and sensational headlines. A myth that criminalized Black women who needed help, instead of treating addiction as a health issue. A myth that destroyed families by incarcerating Black moms.

“How does a newborn benefit from being kept from their mother? How is a child better off in foster care or with their parent incarcerated? But the narrative was cemented: The judiciary process was to quell the influx of new ‘crack babies,’” writes Bonsu Thompson in his latest piece, “How the Crack Era Waged War on Drug-Addicted Mothers.”