Why Did American Soldiers Drug Use During The Vietnam War

Research Essay:

“Why did American soldiers use drugs during the Vietnam War and what was the impact of their drug use?”

There was a significant impact of drug usage by American soldiers during the Vietnam War, which became an increasing problem for the US army and government. Many soldiers started using drugs and became addicted. This had a huge impact on America when Vietnamese war veterans had to return to America once the Vietnam War ended in 1975. This essay will uncover why American soldiers started taking drugs and what the impact of their drug usage was by examining the chosen sources.

When the Vietnam War was starting in 1965 between Ho Chi Minh’s communist North Vietnam and the United States of America, that was the capitalist

“Latin America takes over the drug trade” was the headline of the Guardian in April 1975, which was also the year that American troops started coming back to the USA. (Source six) When the drug trade moved to Latin America, Cambodia was still a prime manufacturer of cocaine, heroin and marijuana. (Source six) In order to get the narcotics from Cambodia to America the drugs were trafficked across the Mexican boarder. (Source six) The increase of demand in America for drugs was influenced from the returning Vietnam War veterans, which meant that smugglers started to have a lucrative business trafficking drugs across the Mexican boarder. (Source five/six) Due to the availability of drugs in America at the time many other American citizens began to use drugs and the demand for narcotics began to increase drastically. This impacted America negatively as the government and the citizens of the United States, as the illegal drug trade was beginning to become a more local issue that would affect the safety and lifestyles of many American citizens. The safety and lifestyles of many American citizens would change as the violence and consequences of people taking drugs around the citizens would increase and put many innocent people in dangerous situations. This in turn put pressure on the government to limit and stop the trafficking of drugs across the Mexican boarder, to preserve the

(Source three) The man, in the cartoon, who is dressed in the American flag pattern, is the state and that the monster America is fighting with is the drug problem in the USA. The monster is evident in being related to the drug problem in America as its sword is a needled that is used to inject drugs and it has another head that is an illegal cigarette and another head that is a small container of drugs. The head that has the needle represents heroin, as injecting heroin is its most common form. The head with the contain represents cocaine as the powder is white inside and snorting cocaine is its most common and popular form. The head that has the cigarette represents ‘weed’ or marijuana as it is most commonly smoked as a cigarette. The ‘drug’ monster represents all the drugs and narcotics, and the problems associated with drugs, brought back from Vietnam as it has all the common drugs used by American veterans. The American government appears to be poorly equipped as ‘he’ only has one sword while the ‘drug monster’ has four different heads that can be used to fight against the government. This suggests that the drug trade in America had a wide variety of different drugs and resources to use that was too much for the American government to handle at the time. (Source three) This had an impact on the American government as they struggled to kill the ‘drug