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Abuse of drugs soars in Yorkshire regiments
Huge rise in positive tests among soldiers
Simon McGee
Political Editor
DRUG abuse in Yorkshire's infantry regiments has soared with more soldiers testing positive for illicit substances last year than in the previous five put together.
The Yorkshire Post can reveal 60 infantrymen belonging to the Green Howards, Prince of Wales' Own and Duke of Wellington's regiments were caught out by compulsory drug tests in 2005, compared with 55 between 2000 and 2004.
Most who tested positive are understood to have been kicked out of the Army as a result.
But the worrying trend is not limited to the county's three regiments – the figures revealed in a parliamentary question showed 1,020 army personnel tested positive for drugs last year, while the use of Class A drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, peaked at 520 cases.
This was double the number of soldiers detected in 2003, the year of the Iraq War, and up 170 on 2004, when the difficulties of trying to win the peace were at their worst in the violence-stricken country.
Across all the Army regiments in the country in the past six years, the tests found that 2,010 had taken Class A drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and ecstasy, 2,340 had taken Class C, such as cannabis, and 230 had taken Class B substances, such as amphetamines.
Ministers were last night facing calls for an urgent probe into whether operational deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan were directly responsible for soldiers turning to drugs to cope with combat stress.
The figures also reveal the corps that runs infantry training centres – like the controversial Catterick and Deepcut bases, the subject of extensive allegations surrounding bullying and suspicious deaths – is among the units with the highest detected drug use. Its record of 60 cases last year is only topped by the much larger Royal Logistics Corps, Royal Artillery and Corps of Royal Engineers.
Yorkshire's regiments, although not among the worse across the entire Army, ranked badly alongside other infantry regiment. In 2005, only the Light Infantry and Royal Welch
Fusiliers regiments had more cases than the Prince of Wales' Own, which had 25 positive results.
Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said last night that an inquiry was needed to find out what is going on.
"This is a reflection of a general problem within society, but the rise is so steep that the Secretary of State needs to investigate immediately and I will be urging him to do so," he said. "We need to find out whether there is anything within the culture of the military behind this disturbing rise."
Scarborough and Whitby MP Robert Goodwill stressed the need for the heads of the new Yorkshire Regiment, which officially forms up from the existing three Yorkshire regiments next month, to make dealing with this problem "a priority".
"These are indeed
very worrying figures
and no doubt the Army will have to hold an inquiry to come up with ways of dealing with it and finding out why it's happening:
whether it's increasing combat stress because of Iraq and Afghanistan or a drug culture beginning to emerge," he said.
"Considering all the organisations and practical issues that Yorkshire's armed forces will face with the upcoming merger, the top brass will have to make sure they don't take their eye off the ball when it comes to dealing with this drug problem."
Compulsory drug testing in the armed forces has led to about 4,000 personnel being discharged in the past five years. Most were from the Army, which tests 85 per cent of its force each year and saw 3,375 dismissals, but the Navy also lost 265 personnel and the Royal Air Force 114.
Major Roger Chapman, curator of the Green Howards Museum in Richmond, served with the regiment for 16 years. He claimed the rise in drug-taking within the Green Howards, which has seen duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Northern Ireland since 2000, was largely caused by a soldier caught dealing at the regiment's Chepstow barracks.
Major Chapman added: "The soldiers in question have gone before the commanding officer, and he has taken the decision to remove them from the ranks of the regiment. This tough stance needs to be taken to show that this should not be happening."
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