Lorraine Heggessey involved in the dismissal of "Blue Peter" presenter Richard Bacon. In October 1998, the "News of the World" newspaper revealed that Bacon had taken cocaine, and he was subsequently sacked from his job as a presenter on the high-profile children's programme. Heggessey appeared on-screen in a specially-recorded one-minute address to viewers shown directly before the first episode of "Blue Peter" to be screened following Bacon's sacking, on 19 October 1998, to explain to young viewers why Bacon had been dismissed, claiming that he had "not only let himself and the team on "Blue Peter" down, but he has also let
Cocaine in the United States by non-medical users outside the middle-aged, white, professional class. Cocaine became associated with laborers, youths, African-americans, and the urban underworld. Popularization of cocaine is first evident with laborers who used it as a stimulant to increase productivity, often supplied by employers. African American workers were believed by employers to be better at physical work and it was thought that it provided added strength to their constitution which, according to the "Medical News", made blacks "impervious to the extremes of heat and cold". Instead, cocaine use quickly acquired a reputation as dangerous and in 1897, the first state bill of control