Congresswoman presses for information on drug abuse in military

A congresswoman is asking the Pentagon for information on how it addresses drug abuse in the ranks, saying the military should be a model for how the country deals with the issue.

“Our Armed Forces are not immune from the issues confronting our society, including drug abuse,” Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, dated Monday. “While drug abuse is significantly lower in the military, many of our service members and their dependents still struggle with addiction to prescription opioid pain medications.”

{mosads}“I would like to see your department serve as a model of how to part of the solution to America’s drug epidemic,” she added.

Eleven percent of service members reported misusing prescription drugs, according to a March 2013 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse cited by Walorski. That’s an increase of 2 percent from 2002 and 4 percent from 2005.

“While this significant increase is certainly related to the frequency of services members deploying in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is an issue that the department must continue addressing,” she wrote. “Beyond the immediate health concerns of our service members and their families, drug addiction and abuse also presents a significant readiness challenge for the total force.”

Walorski specifically wants to know what safeguards the military has in place to prevent over-prescription of opioids and what training the military has on appropriate prescribing of painkillers.

She also asks for data on how the military healthcare program, known as Tricare, prescribes opioids both now and in the past.

Walorski also expressed concern about pseudoephedrine, which is found in many over-the-counter medications such as Benadryl and Sudafed but has been used to manufacture methamphetamine.

The congresswoman asked whether Tricare covers pseudoephedrine products, if those products are available on bases and whether the Pentagon has precautions in place to prevent service members from using fake IDs to get more pseudoephedrine products than allowed by law.