ABSTRACT
Drug abuse is not the same throughout the military. While the predominant problem in Vietnam in the early seventies was heroin, the predominant problem among servicemen in Europe at the same time has been hashish. The civilian communities vis-a-vis drug abuse: specifically, the role that the military performs for the larger community. The process of scapegoating is a vicious cycle. Once the label "deviant" has been attached to a group, it becomes tempting the next time problems arise to attribute them to the "deviant" group. In June 1971, the President created a special agency to combat the drug abuse problem: the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP). The decision to mandatorily test the urine of soldiers for heroin and other drugs as a kind of public health measure comes at a time when neither the public nor the medical profession have any consensus that drug taking is a disease.
