Drugged military forces and civilian prohibition of drugs = $$$$$$$$$$
Oil wasn't the only thing wanted from Middle East and if you look into the
availability and purity of heroin since the start of the Afgan war it looks as if both worked as expected.
"The price in retail purchases has been lower than $600 per pure gram every year since 2001, with costs of $465 in 2012 and $552 in 2002, as compared with $1237 in 1992 and $2690 in 1982. A recent study showed that each $100 decrease in the price per pure gram of heroin resulted in a 2.9% increase in the number of hospitalizations for heroin overdose."
It seems today the "gateway" drugs have become anything born of Big Pharma, over-prescribed far longer than necessary, and cut off w/o weaning creating the consumer base of greater proportions than all the previous wars did w/
opiate use for medical purposes (not for lack of trying though).
"However, in spite of the low level of illicit drug use, abuse of prescription drugs is higher among service members than among civilians and is on the increase. In 2008, 11 percent of service members reported misusing prescription drugs, up from 2 percent in 2002 and 4 percent in 2005. Most of the prescription drugs misused by service members are opioid pain medications.
The greater availability of these medications and increases in prescriptions for them may contribute to their growing misuse by service members. Pain reliever prescriptions written by military physicians quadrupled between 2001 and 2009—to almost 3.8 million. Combat-related injuries and the strains from carrying heavy equipment during multiple deployments likely play a role in this trend."
Wars that facilitate the availability of drugs (whether a specific aim or not) while also creating generations of veteran addicts seems a win/win for Big Pharma/MIC (sometimes resting under the same corp. parent company).
Weed won't be an acceptable treatment for ANYTHING as far as the VA goes as it's federally funded and the 1% like things that cost the taxpayer to line their pockets and Big Pharma still has a (hopefully rapidly loosening due to expanding state sanity) stranglehold on congress.
The things that some veterans were ordered to do and/or some of the things they witnessed during their tour I can easily see driving vets to drugs use and suicide and each war seems to drive the number of both higher than the last.
It is too bad that so many citizens enroll in the armed services from a sense of patriotic duty or fiscal necessity as it was observed by
Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient that
War Is a Racket, the title of two works, a speech and a 1935 short book and that all war is ultimately about money.
