13. The Vietnam War Drug Epidemic
The only drug widely available to American troops in Vietnam until 1969 was marijuana. Then heroin became ever more available. It was cheap, and of such a high level of purity that servicemen could get high smoking heroin mixed with tobacco. That made it more appealing to those who would have been reluctant to inject the drug. By 1971, almost half of US Army enlistees in Vietnam had tried heroin, and of those, about half exhibited signs of addiction. In May, 1971, US Congressmen Robert Steele of Connecticut and Morgan Murphy of Illinois went to Vietnam on a fact finding mission. It uncovered disturbing facts: 15% of American servicemen in Vietnam were heroin addicts. Even more military personnel in theater were recreational users of heroin, marijuana, and other drugs.
Worse, the addiction epidemic spread in the early 1970s from Vietnam to other US military installations around the world. The American garrison in West Germany was particularly hard hit. The armed forces tried to handle the epidemic with a mixture of military discipline and penalties, combined with a limited amnesty. Military personnel caught using or possessing drugs were subject to court martial and dishonorable discharge. On the other hand, those who voluntarily sought help would be offered an “amnesty” and a brief stint of treatment. As statistics revealed, that approach was a dismal failure: during the previous year and a half, heroin use had skyrocketed. The idea that so many servicemen were addicted to heroin horrified the American public. That drug was widely perceived at the time as the most addictive narcotic ever produced, and one whose addiction was nearly impossible to escape.