Drugs Alarm Services

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32382, 22 August 1970, Page 13

Drugs Alarm Services

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, August 21. A United States admiral said today there had been an alarming increase in the use of drugs by United States servicemen.

While Vice-Admiral William Mack defended a Pentagon statement in March that there was no evidence that any unit engaged in the My Lai operation was under the influence of marijuana or other narcotics, he said: “My own feeling is that there was a drug factor, but 1 have no evidence to prove it.”

The statement was issued after a former Army squadleader at My Lai, Sergeant Charles West, testified that half the soldiers in his squad were smoking marijuana on the night before the operation.

In his testimony Admiral Mack said the country’s drugabuse problem “has grown radically in the last few years, particularly in the high school age-group, from where the majority of armed-forces recruits and draftees are obtained.” The admiral’s testimony and the Department of Defence report acknowledged an alarming and serious increase in the incidence of drug cases.

A former army psychiatrist and an ex-army social worker reported to the committee on research thait indicated that about a third of the servicemen in Vietnam are marijuana-smokers. Dr Robert Baird, a New York City psychiatrist who first called attention to drugabuse among the military in

1966, estimated the number of users of marijuana in the military at 600,000, at least 350,000 of them in Vietnam. He also estimated that 85,000 servicemen are on other drugs and that at least 50,000 of them are in Vietnam. Mr Baird was critical of both politicians and the military for “totally ignoring” the drug situation and of scientists and doctors Who have the brazen affrontery to claim “that marijuana is not harmful. “Everyone was concerned when four kids died at Kent University,” Mr Baird said, “that very week-end 17 youngsters died in New York City from an overdose of drugs. “We have lost 43,000 young people in Vietnam. However, in the same amount of time

there have been over 140,000 drug-associated deaths. I do not see any senator or governor getting upset and calling for an immediate investigation,” he said. “This is a state of emergency and should be declared so by Congress.” Mr Baird said that sailors in the merchant marine were smuggling drugs through United States ports where there are few or no customs checks.

The report proposed that the military introduce an amnesty programme under which a drug-user can voluntarily seek assistance before being apprehended by military police, for illegally using drugs.

■This amnesty idea already has been used experimentally in some units in Vietnam.