The U.S. military provides soldiers with amphetamines, sedatives, and painkillers to endure heavy combat.
Date: 1966-1969
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military distributes 225 million tablets of stimulants to those enlisted. Many of these are heavy amphetamines. The military also relies heavily on sedatives and antipsychotic drugs to counter the effects of wartime trauma, as well as opiod painkillers for physical pain that leave many soldiers reliant on heroin and other opiates.
Historians will call the Vietnam War the “first pharmacological war" (Kamienski, 2016) because of the unprecedented use of pharmaceutical drugs for military personnel in combat.