CRACK HARMS CHILDREN

Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity Fails to Adequately Address The
Real Causes of Drug Addiction

One of the saddest social problems generated by substance abuse in
this country is unwanted children who can have birth defects born to
parents who are drug addicts. Such children must be cared for by the
state or extended family and can have needs that are hard to care for.
One woman, however, feels that she has come up with a solution to the
problem of unwanted "crack babies" born to drug or alcohol addicts.

Barbara Harris, the founder of Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity,
or CRACK (also called Project Prevention), believes the solution is to
pay addicts to allow themselves to undergo long-term birth control.

The real problem with Harris' solution is not that she wishes to
prevent addicts from having children they will surely abandon, but the
means she uses to accomplish this goal and the fact that despite the
program's good intentions, it still does not attack the cause of addiction.

According to Project Prevention, participants receive paperwork about
the project, which states that participants can earn $200 for
undergoing one of several medical procedures used in long-term birth
control. But the Project Prevention Web site outlining the program
makes no mention of any other help being offered to the addicts.

In fact, the Project Prevention page states that they do not monitor
where the money is spent, "any more than the government monitors where
welfare or other related money is spent." Although this may be true,
just because the federal government follows a questionable policy is
no reason why a nonprofit organization should do the same.

Project Prevention paying addicts for the birth-control procedure is
unethical. While the idea of preventing pregnancy might appeal to some
addicts, these women are essentially being given free money they can
use to feed their addiction.

Wendy Chavkin, a professor of public health at Columbia University
said in The Village Voice, "Whether or not to have a child is a
profoundly important and private decision. CRACK is offering money
(for addicts) to go out and get high in exchange for a fundamental
human capacity."

This ethical problem could be avoided if CRACK or Project Prevention
used other means to entice addicts to be part of their program, or at
least tried to make sure participants did not take the money and spend
it on drugs. But Harris may not be all that bothered by the ethical
dilemma of her organization.

According to a British Broadcasting Company article, Harris was quoted
in one of her first interviews as comparing people who are substance
abusers to dogs, saying, "We don't allow dogs to breed. We spay them.
We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and
yet these women are literally having litters of children." Although
her concern for the children of addicts may be genuine, she may not
have any for their parents, who also need help.

Harris - and those who bankroll her - seems to be fine with only
treating a symptom of addiction, a problem the program shares with
many other programs related to substance abuse. Many in the United
States, including the federal government, seem to want to avoid the
fact that programs such as Project Prevention will unfortunately
always have participants because they treat effects, not the disease
itself.

The way to end the disease of substance abuse is to reduce demand, but
few pursue this route because it is time-consuming and hard to
accomplish. It is easier to throw money at the participants, get
statistics showing quick progress and go home at the end of the day
feeling that they were able to help solve the problem. But really all
groups such as Project Prevention do is allow the addiction to dig in
deeper, while erasing some of the outward social consequences of addiction.