The Nation: The New Public Enemy No. 1

IN Richard Nixon's Washington, drug abuse has reached crisis priority. Heroin addiction mounts appallingly among American soldiers in Viet Nam; each returned planeload of G.I.s adds to the drug malaise at home. Once confined to black urban ghettos, the disease has come to invade the heartland of white, middle-class America. In the judgment of some soberminded politicians, the spread of heroin addiction could have the effect of precipitating an American pullout from Southeast Asia. The President moved last week to head off any such repercussions, declaring a "national emergency" and initiating the most...

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