Alarming growth of KY drug-addicted newborns

WKMS | By The Associated Press

Published September 3, 2012 at 7:41 AM CDT

A recent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association says the number of Kentucky newborns hospitalized for drug addiction passed on from their mothers has soared over the last decade. The study links the rise to the prescription pill epidemic in the Commonwealth, where hospitalizations for addicted newborns climbed from 29 in 2000 to 730 last year. The report says the national rates more than doubled over the same period. State officials and doctors say statistics include newborn withdrawals from all types of drugs, but they also blame prescription pills for the dramatic increase. Cabinet for Health and Family Services Secretary Audrey Tayse Haynes says the problem is a silent epidemic.

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Todd Hatton

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.

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