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
Prenatal cocaine exposure reported that cocaine use in pregnancy caused children to have severe problems including cognitive, developmental, and emotional disruption. These early studies had methodological problems including small sample size, confounding factors like poor nutrition, and use of other drugs by the mothers. However, the results of the studies sparked widespread media discussion in the context of the new War on Drugs. For example, a 1985 study that showed harmful effects of cocaine use during pregnancy created a huge media buzz. The term "crack baby" resulted from the publicity surrounding crack and PCE. It was common in media reports to emphasize that