1971 SPECIAL REPORT: "VIETNAM WAR, CAM RANH BAY HEROIN REHAB"

Описание: SAIGON, South Vietnam, Dec. 18—The United States Army in Vietnam is discharging large numbers of heroin users despite pledges from President Nixon and the Pentagon to keep drug addicts in the Army for special help and rehabilitation.

Between 1,000 and 2,000 G.L's are being discharged each month, according to an official source, after having been twice certified as heroin users on the basis of urinalysis and after their commanding officers have asserted that they had not made an effort to break the habit and were “of negligible value to the United States Army.”

The administrative device for discharging drug users—and soldiers deemed unfit for ser vice for other reasons—is the two‐twelve,” the casual term for Army Regulation 635‐212.

Since their discharge process certifies the soldiers as habitual users of narcotics, it is unlikely that they have even started to be cured of the habit by the time they leave.

‘War on Heroin’

On June 17, President Nixon declared a special “war on heroin” in a message to Con gress. He announced that legis lation would be sought to “per mit the military services to retain for treatment any indi vidual due for discharge who is a narcotics addict—all our ser vicemen must be accorded the right to rehabilitation.”

There are also 11 “rehabili tation centers,” such as that run by Capt. Thomas Kaiser, a physician and drug‐control officer at Bienhoa near Saigon. At the center users may volun teer for treatment and coun seling for two weeks. Patients at the “rehab” centers do not lose pay, but patients at the treatment centers do.

Volunteer Only Once

A soldier may volunteer only once for admission to a reha bilitation center. If he is found to be on heroin after he leaves —and this too is common—he goes to the treatment center. Two‐time losers are also prime, candidates for the two‐twelve.:

The command has refused to disclose the number of men currently in the treatment cen ters or in the high‐security Drug Abuser Holding Center, for difficult patients, which is part of the Longbinh jail.

There is wide disagreement between the senior medical of ficers at the Army's medical command and the younger of ficers and enlisted caseworkers who deal directly with the heroin addicts over just how serious the Army's problem really is.

The command on the whole is optimistic. Assistant Secre tary of Defense for Health and Environment, Richard S. Wil bur, is currently touring South Vietnam to be briefed on the command's latest figures on the problem.

Dr. Wilbur was told that the Army's compulsory urinalyisis program had turned up 3.7 per cent of the men tested as heroin users. This is a drop, according to official figures, from 5.6 per cent when the testing program began shortly after Mr. Nixon's message in June.

Dr. Wilbur Cited these fig ures and said at a news con ference in Saigon today: “This is the first time that an epi demic of heroin use has been reversed. All of the statistics that we have have turned around, particularly since the peak of the epidemic last Au gust and September.”

It was the first time any of ficial here had acknowledged the seriousness of the drug problem in Vietnam by calling it an epidemic.

Dr. Wilbur did not dispute in dications that many G.I.'s are being discharged from the Army if they have a drug problem rather than being kept in and rehabilitated. “In a time when the Army is being reduced in size, there's a natural inclination to turn away a drug user and keep a good man in,” he said.

The figures also show that of the 33 military deaths this year caused by overdoses of narcotics, 19 occurred last January and February, and there were none in September and October. There are no fig ures available for November.

Medical command experts have also compiled a 96‐item questionnaire that is filled out by narcotics users who have either been caught in the urin alysis testing or who have volunteered for treatment in one of the rehabilitation cen ters.

Incomplete results of the questionnaire indicate, for ex ample, that just 8 per cent of the users “mainline,” or inject heroin directly into their veins. The rest smoke it or sniff it. This has led the command experts to conclude that most heroin users are not seriously involved with the drug and that their chances of staying off it once they leave the Army are better than had been expected.

But of the 386 users who vol unteered to enter one rehabili tation program in May through November, 61, or almost 20 per cent, said they used the needle.

In addition to the two‐twelve discharges, another controver sial part of the army's anti narcotics program is the new requirement that a detection of narcotics use in the urinalysis be entered Into the user's per manent record.

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