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 intensive antidrug program yet undertaken in the U.S. Said Nixon: "America's Public Enemy No. 1 is drug abuse."
In a message to Congress, the President called for the creation of a Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention, a kind of supercoordinator of the activities of the nine federal agencies already active in trying to control drugs. In both scope and power, its functions will be unique. It is supposed to develop overall federal strategy for drug programs in general, and specifically for those within the military. Among its direct responsibilities will be major federal drug-abuse prevention, education, treatment, rehabilitation, training and research programs. The office was set up on a temporary basis by Executive Order pending congressional ap proval. The director, Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, 37, Director of the Drug Abuse Program for the Illinois Department of Mental Health, will report directly to the President. The appointment is a sign of Nixon's seriousness: Jaffe is a leading expert on methadone therapy for heroin addicts and a major figure in research on drug abuse.
The President's program will cost $371 million: $216 million has already been budgeted, and the remaining $155 million is new money to be allocated by Congress. There is serious question as to whether such sums are adequate, but at least they mark a start.
The largest share is slated for compulsory treatment and rehabilitation of addicted Viet Nam veterans. What Nixon proposed, and quickly put into effect last weekend at Cam Ranh Bay and Long Binh, is a program that will subject all G.I.s to urine tests before they return to the U.S. to ascertain whether they have been using heroin or amphetamines. Those found to be on drugs will be given a week of detoxification before they are sent home. If Congress approves, they will also receive an additional three weeks of mandatory therapy in the U.S. at Veterans Administration facilities.
Troublesome Addicts. Perhaps more important than compulsory treatment will be the opening of VA facilities to all former servicemen in need of rehabilitation. Under current regulations, anyone with a dishonorable discharge — the generally accepted means of flushing troublesome addicts from the military — is not eligible for VA therapy. In the first four months of this year, for example, 394 of the 1,003 Marines dismissed from the service for drug-related abuses were discharged dishonorably and could not qualify for rehabilitation. (Most of the others received either general or undesirable classifications.) The new program would change all that.