Shrinking the Drug Specter

Viet Nam is not a particularly fertile field for good news, or for even relatively reassuring statistics. But it now appears that earlier, alarming reports on the extent of drug addiction among G.I.s there were exaggerated.

The G.I. drug problem was first driven home to the American public by former Army Secretary Stanley Resor and Connecticut Congressman Robert H. Steele, who reported that between 10% and 15% of U.S. troops in Viet Nam --or 26,000 to 39,000 men--had developed a heroin habit. Few quarreled with that estimate, and some placed the number even higher.

The specter of a generation of young Americans coming home to seed ad- diction across the U.S. prompted a nationwide outcry and fast White House response. President Nixon created a Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, and named a leading expert to head it: Dr. Jerome Jaffe, then director of the drug abuse program of the Illinois department of mental health. One of Jaffe's first measures was to install urinalysis equipment in Viet Nam to screen all returning G.I.s for traces of drugs. Now in its seventh week, the testing has produced remarkably consistent, and lower than expected results. According to Jaffe, of the 39,405 men so far screened, 2,159--or 5.4%--tested positively with drugs in their systems.

Congressman Steele at first refused to accept Jaffe's figures, calling them "grossly misleading." Last week, however, following a meeting with Jaffe and other White House officials, the Connecticut Republican recanted his earlier statement, labeling Jaffe's figures "the best available statistics we have had to date."

The urinalysis results do not include in their sampling the 12,000 G.I.s who were either arrested for various drug crimes or turned themselves in for treatment during the first six months of this year. Nor do they register those casual users strong enough to kick their habits temporarily and pass the urinalysis test. Jarre himself admits his figures represent only "men who had become dependent on opiates, including heroin." He said that surveys taken in April and May of men below the rank of. buck sergeant showed that about 10% or 11% had used heroin once. But at least the addiction rate, though still insupportable, does not seem as steep as was feared.

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