From Counter-Insurgency to Narco-Insurgency: Vietnam and the International War on Drugs

Abstract

If we have found we cannot be the world's policeman, can we hope to become the world's narc?In the January 1968 issue of theWashingtonianmagazine, the son of the great American novelist John Steinbeck made his professional journalistic debut with the publication of a controversial article, “The Importance of Being Stoned in Vietnam.” John Steinbeck IV, who served as a roving correspondent for thePacific Stars and Stripes, wrote that marijuana of a potent quality was grown naturally in Vietnam, sold by farmers at a fraction of the cost than in the United States, and could be obtained “more easily than a package of Lucky Strikes cigarettes.” He estimated that up to 75 percent of soldiers in Vietnam got high regularly. “The average soldier sees that for all intents and purposes, the entire country is stoned,” Steinbeck observed. “To enforce a prohibition against smoking the plant [in Vietnam] would be like trying to prohibit the inhalation of smog in Los Angeles.”2