Army 'losing battalion' to drugs

The Army is dismissing the equivalent of almost a battalion of soldiers every year for taking drugs, a report says.She said that in 2003 cannabis accounted for 50% of all CDT positive tests and cocaine 22%, but by 2006 the figures were 30% for cannabis and 50% for cocaine. Major Justin Featherstone, also a former soldier, said the figures did not surprise him because young people often came from a culture where drug use was common and they faced huge stress with tours of duty coming around every 18 months.

However, a former chief of staff, Chris Parker, told BBC Radio Oxford that some soldiers who were "not stupid" took drugs to cut short their contract with the Armed Forces. "Young soldiers if they want to leave the Army have to give a year's notice, and if you take drugs, and you are basically found out by the Army's drug testing programme - which is a regular and random programme that's run - you could be discharged almost immediately," he said.

So there you have it. Good soldiers can be kicked out for having a toke at the weekend (but not for getting utterly pissed on a regular basis) and anyone who wants out can engineer a discharge by, erm, having a toke at the weekend (but not for getting utterly pissed on a regular basis). Yep, it all makes perfect sense.

If service personnel back from duty in such godforsaken shitholes as Iraq and Afghanistan can't relax with a big fat joint or a nice line of Charlie at the weekend what's the world coming to? What a change from the Great War when soldiers were provide with cocaine tincture in their ration packs and, if they were lucky, sent coke-laced products by kindly relatives.  The sale or supply of cocaine to soldiers was eventually outlawed in 1916, (except for medical use), partly because of rumours that German manufactured cocaine was being supplied to British soldiers.