28. Fact: The Vietnam War unleashed thousands of addicts upon the US healthcare and legal systems
In May 1971, reports in American newspapers and periodicals addressed a growing and tragic crisis among American troops deployed in and returning from Vietnam. Heroin use reached epidemic proportions among American troops. “Tens of thousands of soldiers are going back as walking time bombs” an officer responsible for curtailing the crisis told the New York Times, adding that the government had no system in place to deal with the epidemic other than to deny its existence. An official US Army estimate, classified at the time, was that up to 37,000 American troops were using heroin at the level qualified as addiction in May 1971. The official government response was to cover it up, an action which remains more or less in effect almost fifty years later.
