Introduction to the Perinatal-20 treatment research demonstration program.

During the 1980s sufficient evidence accumulated to suggest that the use of cocaine and other illegal drugs by pregnant women presented a major public health problem (Frank et al. 1988; Neerhof et al. 1989). Prenatal alcohol and other drug abuse was occurring in all racial and ethnic groups and across all social strata. For example, the results of a study conducted in 1989 in Pinellas County, Florida, found that positive toxicology for illegal drugs varied little between women admitted to public health clinics for prenatal care and women seen in several private obstetric practices (Chasnoff et al. 1990).