When I think of the Vietnam War the drug problem that came into our country during that time period comes to mind. The enemy was every where and set in a fear in the minds of all of our soldiers. The way those soldiers chose to cope with that fear was through getting messed up with drugs. This is unsettling to me because the average age of a soldier in Vietnam was nineteen. I look around the classes I am in and realize that the people around me are at least that age if not older. That was is often been perceived to be a pointless cause, much like a lot of people feel about the war the United States is currently in right now. I would not want this war to turn out to be another “pointless cause” in which soldiers that are my age are sacrificing their lives for.
The website I visited talked all about how the drugs usage was "alarmingly increasing" through out the war. Some examples of the drugs that were used were given, such as: opium, marijuana, and heroin.
The picture to left was a Vietnam soldier. This image is disrupting because he looks as if he is only 17 to 18 years old, and that was about the age of all the men that were over there and that had been killed.
1 comment:
The drugs aspect of the war is one that is often ignored in the history of the war, especially in text books and history classes. However, it isn't ignored in many Vietnam films like Platoon. It's no coincidence that drug use skyrocketed at home at the same time it did in Vietnam. Do you think most of soldiers had no experience with drugs until they were in Vietnam or do you think most of them brought the habits over from home? Also, just so everyone knows, the movie American Gangster has a lot to do with this topic because Denzel Washington's character gets his supply of drugs from Southeast Asia.
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