Class-A Drug Abuse Among Armed Forces Is Still Rising

The number of British soldiers, sailors and airmen caught using Class A drugs such as crack cocaine, heroin and ecstasy jumped to 56.9% of those who tested positive for illegal drugs last year, The Herald reveals.

A total of 575 personnel – the equivalent of an infantry battalion’s manpower – were sacked automatically after random compulsory inspections found traces of banned narcotics in their blood or urine samples.

The culprits, including 518 from the Army, 45 from the Navy and 12 from the RAF, were caught in tests on 129,888 military men and women in the UK forces out of a total strength of 191,000.

The numbers caught using Class A drugs has more than doubled since 2003, when 260 tested positive, increasing to 350 in 2004 and 520 in 2005. A further 268 were found to have used cannabis and amphetamines in 2006, classified in law as controlled substances in Classes B and C and regarded as less addictive “recreational” narcotics.

The Ministry of Defence operates a zero tolerance policy towards drug use and the vast majority of offenders are dishonourably discharged immediately. Commanding officers of battalions, ships and RAF squadrons are given some leeway to retain promising personnel found to be using Class C drugs such as cannabis, provided they agree to enter “early intervention” clean-up programmes.

More than 5300 – the bulk from the Army – have been sacked since 2001 as all three services struggle to retain enough manpower to cope with two ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, peacekeeping roles and training needs.

The loss to drug offences is the equivalent of nine, fully-manned infantry battalions and more than seven times the total of dead and wounded suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Army spokesman Major Philip Curtis said yesterday that while more military people had been detected using Class A drugs, it should also be remembered that the rate represented just 0.7% of those tested as opposed to a 5% rate among civilian employees.

“The Army and other armed forces reflect the society from which their members are drawn,” he said. “Drugs remain incompatible with military service, but are still far less prevalent than in any comparable civilian peer group.

“We don’t know why there has been a rise in Class A use, but it’s probably down to the easier physical and logistical access to substances like cocaine. Overall, the drug of choice for soldiers still tends to be alcohol.”

A total of 70 soldiers have failed random tests since the five-battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland was formed in March last year, including 46 in the first three months of 2007. No figures for the classes of drugs used were available. In 2005, 58 Scottish soldiers tested positive, compared with 49 in 2004, 57 in 2003, 64 in 2002 and 43 in 2001.

Colonel Clive Fairweather, the former SAS second-in-command who once ran infantry training north of the border, said: “There has been a marked culture change across the services and wider society in the past decade, with drugs replacing alcohol as the substance of recreation. Drugs are rife across a certain, mainly male age group from which most recruits are drawn. When personnel go home at the weekend, they are exposed to that culture, especially in inner-city areas.”

A senior officer who declined to be named said: “The numbers caught in random tests probably do not reflect drug use across the forces in their entirety. An internet-aware generation can avoid detection by finding information on which drugs will clear their bodies fastest.”