“Coke blinded me. I didn’t notice the pretty girls nor the trees. I saw only dope. The beautiful things did not touch me anymore. All my attention was on getting my next hit. I spent all my pay on drugs. After hanging around in the streets all the time, I started dealing.”

One often hears the statement, “Yes, I take drugs, but that’s my business!” But drug use always has its innocent victims, from those who become the prey of addicts seeking through desperate means to finance their drug habits, to those who die in traffic accidents caused by drivers under the influence.

The most tragic victims of cocaine use are babies born to mothers who use the drug during pregnancy. In the United States alone, 1 in 5 pregnant women use illegal drugs – approximately 740,000 expectant mothers every year. Some 9,000 of these children are born addicted to cocaine. The rest are plagued with a variety of ills including premature birth, stunted growth, birth defects and damage to the brain and nervous system.

Medical care for these infants costs some $504 million each year. Burdened with learning disabilities, mental and emotional problems, more than half of these children grow up in foster homes. The impact on society of this human tragedy has yet to be fully measured.

Permanent physical damage. Sniffing cocaine permanently damages the nasal passages, destroying the partition inside the nasal cavity. As it gradually becomes more difficult to sniff the drug, addicts begin to inject. The effect of the drug then becomes even stronger and more addictive. Injection also increases the chance of death from overdose.