Study Shows Increased Misuse Of Prescription Drugs in Military for nearly two decades, illicit drug use among active-duty military personnel within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) fell dramatically, from 28 percent in 1980 to less than 3 percent in 1998.

But then the picture began to change.

While use rates for illicit drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine among service men and women have remained encouragingly low, overall drug use in recent years has risen sharply.  This unsettling surge is driven not by an uptick in the use of “street” drugs, but almost exclusively by a steep rise in the misuse of prescription drugs, particularly pain relievers.

According to a new DoD survey, past-month non-medical use of prescription drugs among active-duty DoD personnel doubled from 2002 (2 percent) to 2005 (4 percent).  From 2005 to 2008, the rate almost tripled, soaring to 11 percent. Meanwhile, use of other, non-prescription illicit drugs has hovered around 2 percent since 2002.

Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued guidelines for Federal prosecutors in states that have enacted laws authorizing the use of  “medical marijuana.”  http://www.justice.gov/opa/documents/medical-marijuana.pdf. 

We have had several inquiries about whether the DOJ advice to Federal prosecutors regarding pursuing criminal cases will have an impact upon the Department of Transportation’s longstanding regulation about the use of marijuana by safety-sensitive transportation employees – pilots, school bus drivers, truck drivers, train engineers, subway operators, aircraft maintenance personnel, transit fire-armed security personnel, ship captains, and pipeline emergency response personnel, among others.   

We want to make it perfectly clear that the DOJ guidelines will have no bearing on the Department of Transportation’s regulated drug testing program.  We will not change our regulated drug testing program based upon these guidelines to Federal prosecutors.