During the Vietnam War many soldiers became addicted to illegal drugs.

Some say that the US government and the military gave them illegal drugs like marijuana and heroin as a method to help them deal with the horrors of the situation they were in and as painkillers when other narcotic painkillers ran low.

Drug abuse in the Vietnam War among American soldiers was rampant.

In the early 1970s the Military began offering an amnesty program to returning soldiers that would allow them to get help for their addiction if they confessed to using and asked for help.

Before the amnesty program went into effect soldiers who were caught with illegal drugs could be dishonorably discharged or face other punishments although society at the time wasn’t so obsessed with curbing illegal drug use so the civilian consequences for their actions wouldn’t have been as severe as those the military imposed.

The amnesty program was not a whopping success judging by the fact that drug abuse in the Vietnam War increased by more than 15% in the year previous to the withdrawal of the troops.

By the time the military finally admitted that it had a problem with drug abuse in the Vietnam War the government had ordered the military to begin withdrawing and the Military was already beginning to pull soldiers out of Vietnam and bringing them home.

The rapid withdrawal of troops from the field meant that as many as 1,000 men per day were returning from the Vietnam War and a large percentage of them were addicted to heroin or other drugs.

Hundreds of men per day were turned loose into the civilian population with raging drug addictions that were left over from the drug abuse in the Vietnam War.

The government didn’t offer these soldiers any help or support, which led to serious problems in the civilian sector when these addicts went out into the society.

Crime rates shot up, and drug use rates went alarmingly high.

Drug trafficking by soldiers and drug use became more of a threat to the public safety than it ever had been before.

EASY ACCESS TO DRUGS

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

There is no question about whether or not drug abuse in the Vietnam War took place.

The military’s own records prove that there was serious drug abuse among soldiers in the Vietnam War.

So who bears the responsibility for turning these addicts loose onto an unsuspecting public?

Is it the military’s fault for not getting the soldiers the help they needed to deal with the addictions or is it the government’s fault for not providing medical care and social support once the soldiers were discharged?

Certainly the bulk of the blame rests on the soldiers who took drugs and became addicted but in this situation there is also an element of blame to be laid on the government and the military for failing to support the soldiers and in some cases actively providing them with drugs.

The military is supposed to provide full and adequate health care for soldiers and that includes treatment for drug addictions the same way it would include treatment for a gunshot wound.

THE IMPACT ON SOCIETY

It’s no wonder really that the War on Drugs started not long after the drug abuse in the Vietnam War led to thousands of heroin addicts being dumped into the civilian population by the military.

Without counseling or other support services, and with raging addictions and combat stress disorders like PTSD, these soldiers immediately sank to the bottom of the social sphere.

Selling and using drugs became a cycle for many of the addicts and crime rates skyrocketed. Soldiers trained to use deadly force, and high most of the time, were a huge threat to the general population that the military took no precautions to protect the public from.

Neither the government nor the military is blameless but the biggest amount of blame goes to the military for simply cutting addicted soldiers loose with no support system at all.

THE DRUG WAR AND THE VIETNAM WAR

It’s entirely possible that the Drug War was a lost cause from the start because the War on Drugs was always trying to play catch up to the massive influx of addicts and drugs that flowed into the country daily after the Vietnam War.

Without adequate social and mental support the thousands of addicts that returned home were left to infect the rest of the culture with cheap drugs, violence, and the crime associated with drug trafficking, and the government let it happen.