Drug use in Vietnam

March 17, 2009 8:12 PM

Anyone recall reading about a novel way they ascertained the prevalence of drug use among soldiers in Vietnam? I just can't recall where I saw it but I think it was probabilistic in nature.
posted by ottlite to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

There could be a clue in this:

"The men sent to Vietnam had either been drafted or had enlisted. Toward the end of the war, when drug use in the United States was highest, draftees were chosen by a lottery designed to make selection less susceptible to social-class biases. This produced draftees who were a reasonably representative sample of young American men. Those who enlisted voluntarily, however, who made up about 40 percent of the armed forces, were disproportionately school dropouts. Many of them enlisted before reaching draftable age because of their limited occupational opportunities. They also arrived in Vietnam with considerably more drug experience than the draftees."

(emphasis mine)

From here.

More about the subject here.

Dr Norman E. Zinberg worked for the DoD during the period, studying drug use amongst military personnel in SE Asia.
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:31 PM on March 17, 2009

I can't help you with this specific problem but I'm an epidemiologist(-in-training) that mainly works in illicit drug use. The usual way to estimate the size of a hidden population (i.e., drug-using soldiers) is some variant of the capture-recapture method. Crudely described, the overlap between two incomplete surveys of the population are used to calculate an estimate of the unobserved members of the population.
posted by docgonzo at 10:12 PM on March 17, 2009

Best answer: Just to jog your memory, did it involve randomized response survey(s)?
posted by daksya at 10:41 PM on March 17, 2009