The British Army is losing the equivalent of one battalion a year as a result of illegal drug-use, more than the number of fatalities and serious casualties in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Research into Compulsory Drugs Testing (CDT) of UK service personnel has identified a rise in positive tests for illegal substances in the British Army from 517 individual cases in 2003, to 795 in 2005 (and 769 in 2006), and also a 4-fold increase in soldiers testing positive for the class-A drug cocaine. The study is published today in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
Professor Sheila Bird, senior scientist at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit said: “What is worrying from our study of compulsory drug testing (CDT) figures for the armed services is the sharp increase in the proportion of soldiers testing positive for cocaine, a sharper increase than in 16-24 year olds in society at large.”
“It’s vital that we find out what lies behind this the rise in positive tests for cocaine from 1.4 per thousand in 2003 to 4 per thousand in early 2006 and 5.7 per thousand in early 2007. The interim period coincides with major combats in both Afghanistan and Iraq and there is natural concern that the rise in cocaine use may be a direct result of increased combat stress.
“We need to know more about how the tests were conducted and whether methods have remained the same over that period to assess the scale of the problem. However, our work looking at CDT in prisons has shown that testing can under-estimate the number of sporadic users dramatically. This could just be the tip of the iceberg.”
Other factors may be playing a part in increased levels of positive tests. A change in the sensitivity of the tests used or in the weekdays of testing could be to blame. Soldiers could be ‘switching’ from cannabis to cocaine in a perverse attempt to avoid testing positive as cocaine disappears from the system in just 2-3 days. This last theory seems unlikely, because irrational: ecstasy would be a much less harmful option as a 'drug of evasion'.