TEN British soldiers a week are caught taking Class A drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine, shocking new figures obtained by our local paper Scotland on Sunday.

The number of busts for hard drugs within the British army has doubled in two years and now easily exceeds positive tests for cannabis.
        

Almost 1,000 soldiers were caught by random drug tests last year, in what some experts claim is a clear sign of troops suffering plummeting morale and mounting pressure.

Figures released by the Ministry of Defence show that 520 soldiers tested positive for Class A drugs in 2005, massively up on the 350 recorded the previous year and double the 260 caught in 2003.

Over the same two-year period, the number of soldiers testing positive for Class C drugs, such as cannabis, has risen from 340 to 460.

The rising toll of positive drug tests - 980 in 2005 - is pushing the army's policy of compulsory expulsion to the limit. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are already causing considerable strain on British forces, and the MoD cannot afford to dismiss so many soldiers for taking illegal drugs.

The defence minister claims those who test positive "are almost always discharged", although the army has an Early Intervention Programme (EIP) designed to re-educate offenders.

But this newspaper has established that at least 14 young recruits have been caught taking drugs again after going through EIP schemes designed to keep them in the service.

The defence Secretary is now under intense pressure to bring the drug abuse problem under control.

This is a reflection of a general problem within society.
We need to find out whether there is anything within the culture of the military behind this disturbing rise.

I have no doubt the army have a robust anti-drugs policy, based on prevention, detection and disciplinary or administrative action.


Compulsory drug testing is a part of the approach, by providing an active deterrent to drug-taking. The army tests 85% of the force annually for all controlled drugs and those caught are almost always discharged.

Two years ago I read in Scotland on Sunday that Scottish infantry regiments had the worst record for drug abuse in the British army, and were four times more likely to fail tests for heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances than the military average.

All the units with the worst records traditionally recruited from inner-city areas, including Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool.

The latest figures show that, across all the army regiments in the country over the past five years, the tests found that 2,010 had taken Class A drugs, 2,340 Class C, and 230 Class B substances. Of the 89,000 tests in 2005, one in 87 proved positive.

The worst offenders were the Royal Logistic Corps, which recorded 380 drug-test failures during the five-year period, 70 of them in 2005. Members of the Royal Artillery failed 325 tests altogether. Forty of the failures were reservists with the Territorial Army.

The renewed evidence of high rates of drug-taking in the services comes amid long-running concerns that the stresses of warfare are turning many young recruits towards illegal substances. American defence chiefs have reported historically high rates of suicide among personnel who have fought in Iraq, and studies have suggested many returning troops have severe problems with stress and substance abuse.


But the MoD is now planning to expand its drug rehabilitation programmes for those service personnel who escape the ultimate sanction. I feel it can't happen soon enough.