CRACK MOTHERS This work seeks to assert that medicine and criminal justice have always been at odds on the subject of drug use. The one treats drug users as a patient, the other criminals. However, beginning in the 1980s, the crack mother scare led to an alliance between doctors and prosecutors in some American states, where doctors turned addicted pregnant women over to the police for arrest, trial and incarceration. The author analyzes the public reaction to crack cocaine and the policies instituted to combat it. She shows us that, more often than not, policies were generated by the fears that crack mothers were the harbingers of even more serious social problems.