Drugs in the barracks

Abstract

The number of military personnel on active duty sent to military hospitals rose from 3 in 1974 to 96 in 1978. Since recruits who already have drug addiction problems are immediately admitted to these hospitals, this means that the problem is worrying. The approach to substance use during military service may depend on the fact that, with the myth of military life as a formative and educational experience for community values now a thing of the past, the barracks are seen as a restrictive and depersonalizing place, where emotionally weak individuals can compensate for their frustrated desire for power with drugs. Military institutions shirk their responsibility to take preventive action and consider drug addiction to be an infirmity incompatible with military service and, moreover, self-inflicted, whereas their intervention in terms of re-education and social integration would be desirable