The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs

Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond

by Jeremy Kuzmarov

The image of the drug-addicted American soldier―disheveled, glassy-eyed, his uniform adorned with slogans of antiwar dissent―has long been associated with the Vietnam War. More specifically, it has persisted as an explanation for the U.S. defeat, the symbol of a demoralized army incapable of carrying out its military mission.

Yet as Jeremy Kuzmarov documents in this deeply researched book, popular assumptions about drug use in Vietnam are based more on myth than fact. Not only was alcohol the intoxicant of choice for most GIs, but the prevalence of other drugs varied enormously. Although marijuana use among troops increased over the course of the war, for the most part it remained confined to rear areas, and the use of highly addictive drugs like heroin was never as widespread as many imagined.

Like other cultural myths that emerged from the war, the concept of an addicted army was first advanced by war hawks seeking a scapegoat for the failure of U.S. policies in Vietnam, in this case one that could be linked to "permissive" liberal social policies and the excesses of the counterculture. But conservatives were not alone. Ironically, Kuzmarov shows, elements of the antiwar movement also promoted the myth, largely because of a presumed alliance between Asian drug traffickers and the Central Intelligence Agency. While this claim was not without foundation, as new archival evidence confirms, the left exaggerated the scope of addiction for its own political purposes.

Exploiting bipartisan concern over the perceived "drug crisis," the Nixon administration in the early 1970s launched a bold new program of federal antidrug measures, especially in the international realm. Initially, the "War on Drugs" helped divert attention away from the failed quest for "peace with honor" in Southeast Asia. But once institutionalized, it continued to influence political discourse as well as U.S. drug policy in the decades that followed.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Lutz Barz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frightening. That supposedly sane people, Kennedy, Nixon, Kissinger and the other devastators of distant people are never called to account in that sacred institution of respectable criminals, the United Nations. To actually napalm villagers, alive because in Laos they have used opium for medicine and cultural purposes defies logic. Which Kuzmarov explains very well. That book should be compulsory reading for so called abolitionist experts. Its criminal. Thousands murdered because they resist market economies that disenfranchise their lives as well. There was a time in the mid '80s when WHO plus other UN agencies actually wanted to eradicate all natural growing drugs on this planet. And no one objected! Only the logistics was beyond them. Not enough napalm apparently. Or other defoliants that left thousand dead of late developing cancers plus poisoning the landscape. Because the indigenous have used natural drugs successfully for millennia. But the DEA et.al don't care. They think themselves as Masters of the Universe. And accuse those who enjoy drugs as deluded!

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

gets some of it right
gets some of it wrong

worthy of careful reading

[CJ EVHS Lusitna]

I read this book for my research project for history through literature. Supporting my thesis the author over exaggerated many things about drug use and US soldiers. Very entertaining and exciting.