REPORT OF HON. JOHN M. MURPHY TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE ON MILITARY DRUG PROGRAMS

Mr. Chairman, on July 24, 1970, the Department of Defense issued a task group report on the problem of drug abuse in our military forces. The task group, comprised of experts in the various services who studied the problem world wide recommended appropriate revisions in Department of Defense policy on drug abuse. The following statement appears in the "rehabilitation" section of that report: "Treatment programs require such prolonged absence from productive service, and long-term success rates with such individuals are so low that creation of a treatment and rehabilitation program within the services is not feasible."

After my own study in recent months of various programs in the armed services I am convinced of the wisdom of that particular conclusion. That task force report was, however, superceded by the White House directive of June 17, 1971 calling on the individual services to set up a system of amnesty, detoxification, treatment and return to duty or discharge for addicted servicemen. I have studied some of the major programs--some rather hastily establishedset up by the various services to comply with the President's directives. These include the Navy/Marine program at Miramar Naval Air Base in California, the Air Force program at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, and the Army programs at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Dix, New Jersey. I have also visited the Public Health Service programs at Fort Worth, Texas and Lexington, Kentucky to see what happened to addicted servicemen from the earlier years of ou rinvolvement in Vietnam. On my recent trip to Southeast Asia I also conferred with military medical personnel, agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and Individual Drug Addicted Troops. The results of my meetings and observations have led me to some firm conclusions which I summarize briefly as follows:

1. Drug abusing troops at many stateside and overseas bases are having a disastrous effect on military discipline and morale.

2. While we have not reached the point where drug use has severely hampered the over-all ability of the military to carry out its mission, i.e., the war in Vietnam and the defense of the United States, if the proper steps are not taken we will eventually reach that stage based on current trends.

4. Despite the furor in the Congress and the press over the recent exposures of our service connected drug problem, the military is not aware of nor responding to the nature and depth of the drug menace facing the men in the service. This is especially true in Southeast Asia.

For example, the Navy program at Miramar was set up and administered by professional treatment types. Two weeks after my visit there these personnel were relegated to advisory roles and line officers were placed in charge of the programs. Top Army Officials told me that the Army has set up 32 different programs in as many Army installations and hospitals to carry out the new Department of Defense drug policy because "we don't know exactly what to do so we are trying 32 different approaches."

5. An already bad drug abuse control program is being made worse by the inflexibility of the administration; it refuses to change in the face of the obvious failures in the program. The problems of the urinalysis phase of the administration's approach are a case in point. On July 22, 1971, I spoke to three Marine "addicts" at Miramar, who were "assigned" to the program by the Marine command as a token compliance with the President's directives. They insisted that they were not addicts even though they had shown up as such on the urinalysis machine.

The Department of Defense has now admitted that almost one third of the troops "failing" the urinalysis test in Vietnam were found to be drug free. On the other hand, there were numerous reports to me during my studies of successful attempts to "beat" the machine in addition to many users who were actually not detected.

6. Many amnesty programs do not attract servicemen who are members of minority groups because of the lack of trust on the part of these addicts for the "white man's" program, nor do the contradicting and fluctuating rules regarding these programs instill in the addict the confidence that if he turns himself in he will receive anything more than disciplinary action or a prison sentence.

The head of the Navy program at Miramar said in reference to the fact that there was not one black addict in his program that the Navy had "10,000 beaters and not one elephant in the trap."

Mr. Chairman, the more I study the drug problem in the Armed Forces, the more I am convinced there is no room for addicts in a military setting.

In my testimony before the subcommittee on health, I described the type of psychopathic addict that will continue to be beyond the reach of treatment personnel despite every effort to prevent him from using drugs. This was brought home to me again when I visited the Miramar treatment facility where the addict patients got me aside and complained that there had been a "sweep" of their barracks the day before my arrival. They were told they were going outside to have a fire drill. The "drill" lasted four hours while naval personnel went through the barracks with marihuana sniffing dogs. I questioned the head of the program and he confirmed the inspection which turned up a drawer full of narcotics-right in the treatment center.

The Department of Defense Task Group Report I referred to at the beginning of my statement endorses such a procedure. In their conclusions the group states: "The well-established program conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service and expansion of Veterans' Administration facilities should provide adequate treatment and rehabilitation for service members separated because of true addiction. It is essential that these follow-up programs be established and become operational for those drug abusers who cannot be salvaged for military service and subsequently must be discharged."

WHAT THE TROOPS ARE SAYING

A flavor for the nature and extent of the drug problem in the services can be derived from the G.I. users themselves. In my studies I have found them to be brutally frank in discussing their own drug abuse and that of others. For this reason I have noted some of the anecdotes and comments made by soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen. Indicative of the pervasiveness of the military drug culture, the disorder and confusion addition has caused in the services, and the conflict between the young addicts and the regular Army officers. Miramar Naval Air Station

"I got out of NAM just in time. I owed $125 to Vietnamese pushers for heroin. They (the Navy) found 60 pounds of heroin in quarters where I lived in Nha Be one week after I left. This is near one of the hottest combat areas for the Navy, 'Ambush Bend' where the Long Tau and Nha Be Rivers intersect."

"My habit in Vietnam was $20 a day. Here (in the U.S.) it is two Sony Hi-Fi sets and a half dozen watches."

"When heroin users are detected they apply for amnesty-and why notthey may beat a five year rap."

One Navy addict when asked if his effectiveness was curtailed at all by the use of drugs answered, "I worked in an air terminal unit. No one knew I was using drugs. While I was writing tickets a guy would be sitting under the counter rolling heroin dipped cigarettes, light it for me and give it to me. The officer getting the ticket didn't know how my cigarette got lit. I knew a lot of guys who got up to using 10 glacine vials of heroin a day-all they cared about was getting heroin." The addict then repeated over and over, "Get some money to get some heroin, get some money to get some heroin, get some money to get some heroin..."

"The attitude of officers in the Marine Corps is that the addict is the lowest creature on earth.”

"I got a court martial for possession of marihuana and heroin. They wrote letters to my parents, 55 and 65 years old, telling them this."

Travis Air Force Base

Customs agents: "Dogs are used to inspect the planes after the men leave. Heroin vials are found on the aircraft and also in the customs restrooms and garbage cans."

Army nurse: "The marihuana smoke on some of the flights home is so thick the air turns blue."

A G.I. addict in the Travis Air Force Base Hospital: "My habit got up to $40 a day in Okinawa. So I became a pusher. I turned myself in because I got completely out of wack and was losing control. I was shooting up to 8 times a day. There were 200 in my company and 40 used heroin. One of the users was my hero. He would try to shoot it closer to his brain and so he would shoot it in his jugular vein."

At Travis Air Force Base Hospital I talked to a much decorated G.I. who had been booby trapped and severely wounded. He was deeply disturbed over the drug problem in Vietnam. He told me, "It seems the Army is on one continual 'high.' When I was hurt I was taken to the hospital at Cam Ranh Bay. There were only ten G.I.'s in there for wounds, the rest were for drugs. I caught two patients shooting each other up and on this one day they searched and found 2,000 plastic heroin tubes on hospital property."

I also visited the psychiatric ward at Travis where two G.I.s were going through heroin detoxification. They had abstained from heroin use in Vietnam for five days to "beat the machine"-which they did. When they found that they had beat the machine they decided to celebrate on their last night before departing Vietnam by having a heroin party, in their own words, "one last blast." Fortunately their commanding officer suspected they were drug users and made them take another urinalysis test just prior to their takeoff for the States. When the test results returned "positive" for heroin the plane was already above the Pacific. The C.O. radioed Travis Air Force Base and the two troopers were apprehended when they disembarked from the plane. They were going through withdrawal and put in the base hospital.

A base psychiatrist and I woke up the addicts, a black, 21 year old who will be in the Air Force until 1975; and a white 23 year old Air Force sergeant who will be in until 1973. They were both from the same unit at Ben Hoa in Air Force supply on a restricted air base. In the words of the sergeant, "a guy on the base would buy heroin from Vietnamese military police who would bring in 200 heroin vials a week (which kept getting smaller.) The Vietnamese M.P.s had access to the base and the Air Force pusher would meet them and make the exchange. 200 bottles for $6 a bottle." They described their heroin party as "their last fix. Never touch it again." But when I asked, "How could you smoke this stuffheroin?" One trooper blurted out, "It's easy, it's great, when you finish you chew the filter."

Lackland Air Force Base

"The Air Force started to give us massive doses of thorazine (a tranquilizer) in Vietnam because some of us were litter cases going through withdrawal. The doses were just too much. I passed out on the floor of the lavatory and on the flight back to the States there were two addicts who went into cardiac arrest and we had to make an emergency landing in the Philippines to save them."

"I tried the Air Force amnesty program in Vietnam three times. I would get detoxed, released, and told to return to my unit. But the first thing I did was go downtown and get a fix. Then I returned to my unit. The amnesty program was a joke."

Vietnamese troops in Laos would come up to our vehicles and press a thumb to their nose in a "snorting" fashion indicating to the American G.I., "Do you want some heroin?"

"Man, like my unit was in a less accessible area than these other dudes and I would take a helicopter trip twice a week to pick up 200 vials of heroin and bring it back to base. But like it was a friendship thing. Everyone was using and I did it because we were all in it together."

When I asked this Air Force corporal how much he paid for the heroin he replied, "$2.00 a tube." When I asked what he sold it for he said, "$5.00 a tube." "Where are the rest of the addicts (at Lackland)? I know 400 users who went through before me and with me and I don't see but a few of them here. Where are the other 400?"

"On heroin you can do your job real good, man. On pot you get all messed up and can't function, but on heroin you can function."

"I was a heroin user for five years before I got into the Air Force. I was in some of the best treatment centers in New York and New Jersey. I was off drugs for a year before I joined the Air Force, but got hooked again in Vietnam. These doctors here don't know what they're doing. They don't understand drug addicts."

"We want to get home. We miss our parents and friends and the treatment people won't even let us call home with our own money."

An admitted heroin pusher-addict: "When I got grabbed into this program in Vietnam I didn't even have time to take care of my personal business. I had, you know, personal property, electronic equipment, bank accounts. I was forced to leave it all behind."

"Man, why do they always pick on pot smokers and heroin users. I worked at an Air Force Base in Vietnam, used heroin and did my job good. But some of those pilots were juicers man, and sometimes we had to carry them to the plane and dump them in the cockpit and practically point the plane down the runway."

REPORT OF HON. JOHN M. MURPHY TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE ON FORT BRAGG DRUG PROGRAM

Mr. Chairman, I have recently returned from an inspection of "operation awareness," the drug rehabilitation program at Ft. Bragg (the home of the 82nd Airborne Division and the United States Government's strategic reserve) and it is obvious to me that the army is no place for the rehabilitation of this country's addicted servicemen. Although this small operation consisting of only 8 personnel assigned to rehabilitation, counseling, education, treatment and narcotic enforcement, is handling the explosion of addicted troops including those stationed stateside and hooked Vietnam veterans estimated by the Pentagon to number over 30,000. Base officers told me that there are a minimum of 2,500 heroin addicts at Fort Bragg alone.

There was a consensus among command officials and treatment personnel that though this program has filled a temporary, stop-gap need, until a substantial program can be developed using all of the facilities the Federal Government has at hand, the problem of handling massive numbers of addicted G.I.'s will not be solved. I am convinced, however, that Ft. Bragg and other military bases should not have to divert their limited defense dollars and manpower resources which were earmarked to sustain our strategic reserve forces, for the treatment of drug abusers. Ft. Bragg's program, for example, is financed out of monies appropriated for defense functions. I was told that the educational materials used to wean G.I.s away from drug use were literally 'stolen' by army personnel.

In desperation, the managers of "operation awareness" finally asked the Nixon Administration for a minimum of $100,000 to operate the program-they got $31,000. This means that the doctors and therapists have still had to beg, borrow, and steal resources and supplies from other sources.

I am convinced that drug rehabilitation is totally incompatible with the role and mission of the United States army. The only people who enter the program at Ft. Bragg are those who are motivated by impending disciplinary action or who come into the program to taper off from an expensive drug habit. If the addict does not decide to get involved in treatment or has his habit tapered off he simply leaves the program-71 had already done this in the group of 558 that I studied.

The inability of the armed services to cope with the heroin problem and the devastating impact it has on our defense preparedness was emphasized when narcotic enforcement officers at Ft. Bragg told me that half a million dollars worth of military equipment was stolen from Ft. Bragg last year, much of which was exchanged for money in local pawn shops in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

With the cooperation of the state of North Carolina, the military police set up a monthly program to compare pawn tickets with lists of stolen government property. Although some of the property is retrieved by this, the money has already been spent to purchase dope.

Another major method of supporting high cost drug habits is the practice of many G.I.'s who go to Atlanta, Georgia, to purchase "three spoons" of high grade heroin which they cut with dilutants. They shoot up half of the drug themselves and sell the other half to addicts on the base.