Drug-Free Lifestyle?

"In the Atlanta area, Young Marines is a youth education and service program for boys and girls, ages 8 through completion of high school.  The Young Marines promotes the mental, moral, and physical development of its members. The program focuses on character building, leadership, and promotes a healthy, drug-free lifestyle.  The Young Marines is the focal point for the U.S. Marine Corps' youth Drug Demand Reduction efforts.  We do this while having fun."

Now this sounds admirable, doesn’t it?  Drug-free lifestyle, well yeah, what’s not to like about that?

However, as often is the case with the military, if you look a little deeper, if you part the curtains and look behind, the picture changes drastically.  The following excerpts are from an article of which there is a link to at the end of this if you wish to read more.

“The reporters’ analysis mirrors results from a survey taken of some 28,000 active duty soldiers and Marines and published in December 2009. In that Pentagon assessment, one in four troops admitted to abusing prescription medication — mostly painkillers — in a one-year period; as many as 20 percent of Marines said they too, had abused pills. Two percent of those surveyed said they had thoughts of suicide, and 60 percent of Marines said they had engaged in binge drinking over the course of the year.”

“Marquez started destroying himself with the pills that were supposed to help him.For his injuries, he said, doctors at Evans prescribed him 90 morphine pills, 90 Percocets, and five fentanyl patches every three weeks.“They were for pain,” he said. “And I still had pain.  But, mostly, I was using them to get high.”He could not get Iraq out of his head. Doctors prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills, but he said they didn’t help. He was saving up Percocet, then downing a handful on an empty stomach.  He said he started trading his morphine with other soldiers for an anti-psychotic called quetiapine and an anti-anxiety drug called clonazepam. Improper use of either can cause psychotic reactions, anxiety, panic attacks, aggressiveness and suicidal behavior, but, Marquez said, injured soldiers traded them like children in a lunchroom swapping desserts.  “It was real common among the guys who were hurt,” Marquez said.  At one point, Marquez said, he ate his three-week supply of meds in half the time, then went back to Evans claiming he had lost his pills.  He said a doctor told him security measures prevented him from giving Marquez more narcotics, but he could write the soldier a paper prescription he could fill in Colorado Springs.  Marquez agreed.”

“The Military Times report indicates more than a few sordid things — that the military is knowingly rotating sick soldiers into combat under the influence of powerful painkillers, anti-depressants and other psychotropic drugs, some of which have been negligently prescribed and/or are being used as part of a mind-blowing cocktail of other drugs. Second, the pharmaceutical companies are really cleaning up, just like they do in the civilian world. Thirdly, if all goes as planned, we will have some 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and at least (if draw-downs go as planned), another 50,000 in Iraq by the end of the summer. So the military wins another round at faking out the “Army is broken” meme. But one wonders how many of these soldiers and Marines are on their second, third, fourth tours, or how many pills it takes them to get through the day. Seems as though they are the real losers in this equation. But how long can it all last?”

Drug-free life style?  Where?

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