SMOKING GUNS

Eighteen Soldiers Who Tested Positive For Cannabis And Cocaine This Week
Are Likely To Be Kicked Out Of The Army. Ken Lukowiak, Who Knows A Thing Or
Too About Drugs And The Forces, Says Let's Cut Them Some Slack

Thursday February 8, 2001 The Guardian

In the spring of 1983, my battalion was posted to Belize in Central
America. Before we departed we were warned on various occasions about the
high-potency marijuana that Belize was apparently famous for. In case the
importance of these warnings didn't quite sink in, the battalion's junior
NCOs, of which I was now a newly promoted member, were given a lecture on
drug abuse by a plain-clothed sergeant of the royal military police.

The lecture's level of information (such as marijuana is also commonly
known on the mean civvie streets as "dope" or "weed", and is rolled into
cigarettes that are called "reefers") only made us wonder just where the
army thought we had all been the last 20 years or so. Obviously not on the
council estates where most of us had been brought up. At one point the
military policeman (MP) lit a nice sized piece of Moroccan hashish and
passed it around the room. The logic behind this was that should we ever be
walking past the bike shed in Belize and smell such an aroma wafting
through the air, then we'd know what it was - and even more importantly
what to do about it. In reality of course we had as much chance of smelling
a piece of burning hashish in Belize, (which is quite different from the
smell of burning grass) as we did of seeing an iceberg, and why the MP
didn't just burn a piece of grass instead, I do not know. After all, it
wasn't like he didn't have any. For identification purposes, he had a large
glass-faced cabinet that contained a neatly labelled amount of most the
world's types of dope.

Unfortunately for me, when we did finally arrived in Belize, I was one of
the few to ignore the warnings. I not only smoked dope just about every day
of our six-month tour, I also thought it would be an act of pure genius to
smuggle a few pounds of it back home.

There wasn't a lot of drug abuse in my day. Of the 120-plus soldiers
stationed at our company location in Belize I knew of only two others who
smoked marijuana. At the time if the army did have a drug problem within
it's ranks then if anything it was one of over indulgence in alcohol. In
fact in the army military hospital in Woolwich a whole ward was dedicated
to weaning soldiers off the legal liquid narcotic. As for other drugs,
once, on a trip to Belize city, a friend and I purchased a gram of cocaine
- - which today I now know was the most expensive baking powder in Central
America.

In the end I was caught, discharged from the army, and sentenced to 18
months in prison. At my trial no one from the regiment came to speak on my
behalf and the fact that only the year before I had put my life on the line
and even killed for "them" - whoever they may be - if anything, seemed to
count against me. An example had to be made. And it was.

A couple of weeks into my sentence I was joined in HMP Winchester by three
onetime members of 3 Para. They, like me, had fought in the Falklands and
again, like me, had fallen foul of the law a year latter. Their crime was
to gang-rape a girl in the block one night. And yet when they stood before
a court they were allowed to wear their uniforms and medals and various
members of their battalion appeared to speak on their behalf. And even back
then there was this bit of me that couldn't help but feel that someone's
got their priorities all wrong here.

Last year six members of 1 Para were found to have smoked marijuana after
their company was randomly drug tested. When the news broke, the papers
were filled with various quotes from the usual Ministry of Defence and army
suspects who all toed the party line of zero tolerance and called for the
instant dismissal of the soldiers concerned.

In the Sun one unnamed Parachute Regiment officer was quoted as saying:
"They should be lined up against a wall and shot." Very little was made of
the fact that the soldiers concerned had all just recently returned from
operational duties in Sierra Leone and that maybe, just maybe, for once a
little bit of slack could be given in their direction.

And this week, another 18 soldiers from the 1st Battalion the King's
Regiment tested positive for cannabis and cocaine. No doubt they will soon
be added to the 2,300 soldiers who have been dismissed from the service
since random testing was introduced in 1995. With the ever-growing shortage
of troops that our military are now facing, at some point someone surely
has got to try to put a plug in this waste of trained personnel.

Of course no one, me included, can agree with members of our armed forces
using drugs. Stoned people and guns are not a good combination. Though it
does seem almost inconsistant to on the one hand say that drugs destroy
people and that soldiers who take them have a problem and then to deal with
that problem by throwing them out on the street. Could it perhaps be
possible for the military to try to rehabilitate any soldiers who have
fallen foul of the drug laws? If space can be found in military hospitals
for alcohol abuse, then why not for other types of drugs? To train people
to kill and then to throw them out into civvie street with no therapy or
counselling may just be a few thousand court cases for compensation just
waiting to happen. Anybody know a good lawyer?

* Ken Lukowiak served with the Parachute Regiment in the Falklands war. His
latest book is Marijuana Time, published by Orion at UKP 9.99.