In 1977, as I joined the Air Force....they wanted me to know that they did drug testing. I was young and naive....and just didn't really think much about it. Other than one test at the recruiting station....I didn't have to mess with any of this business for about a year. Being from a dry county in Bama, and protected by Baptists....I had no real perception of drugs....other than Bayer aspirin.
Six months later, I arrived in Germany, and got an education on illegal drugs. In those brief two years, I came across just about every kind of user that you can imagine. From weed to LSD, from uppers to downers, various pain-killers, etc.
I had the one guy in our shop who smoked mary-j-u-wanna in the morning as he got up, and did it again at lunchtime. He was supposed to be a heavy-equipment operator, but most of the guys begged the boss to just let him ride in the truck or shovel stuff.
I worked with one guy who had a permanent revolving appointment with the doctor on a monthly basis, and got the maximum amount of pain-killers that the doctor would issue. He had faked a massive back injury and at the age of 22....he was heavily medicated on pain-killers almost twenty-four hours a day.
We had some dimwit gal who went into Frankfurt one night, got loped-up on LSD....and the folks were smart enough to put her into a taxi to get her back to base. When they dropped her off in front of the building....she just stood there....for almost thirty minutes (this was around midnight). Some guys walked by....asked some if she needed help, and she just mumbled away. They got her into the building and just left at the door....where she stood around a while...mostly looking at the amazing fingers on her left and right hands.
By the end of 1978, the Air Force had upped it's drug testing program and finally started picking up folks...a few here, and there. To be honest, I doubt that they ever had a reliable program and that ninety-percent of those using drugs were slipping through the cracks.
In the 1980s....the Air Force improved it's program again, and more folks started to get picked up. By the 1990s, the Air Force had added cocaine and crack.....plus steroids and growth hormones. Before I retired, they came to admit that they had this pretty long list of forbidden things, but they really couldn't test for all of them....so they typically picked out their hot "dozen" of the month or quarter....and you simply were guessing if they'd select you for a round of drug testing, and if they might even have your preferred drug on the hot "dozen".
This all comes up today....because the military announced this week that they've decided to add three more items to the forbidden list.....and start testing for them. The items? Vicodin, and the anti-anxiety medications Xanax and Valium.
It's a curious list. All have been out for more than a decade. Prescriptions? Well....my guess on an average base of 3k military folks....there's at least forty people on a regular prescription of Vicodin, with another hundred people who might illegally obtain it and use when they have pain. Xanax and Valium? I'd be betting that at least two hundred folks have some dosage of the drug which is legally prescribed to them. I worked with one young gal about ten years ago, who was given the maximum dosage possible for Xanax for her weight group.
My humble guess is that the generals have finally come to add up the drug bills and grasp just how many bottles of Valium are being handed out at the base clinic, and they worry about this. They probably figure twice as many folks use Valium and a fair number obtain it from their friendly neighbor who obtains the stuff from Mexico.
Working for the Pentagon, I still have this umbrella of drug testing over my head. On any given day....my boss might call and indicate that my number came up, and I've got eight hours to show up at some toilet in the Pentagon and give a cup of life-sustaining liquids to be tested.
The curious thing here that I see....is that from a historical prospective....in 1944, there wasn't a single guy in the US military tested for anything. So eighty years later....we are approaching the point where fifty-odd items are on some list to be occasionally tested, and folks in management add and worry over the numbers each and every month. We've come a long way, and it's probably not a positive way.
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