The Marine Corps has a message for the more groovy-minded grunts in the ranks: Please, for the love of God, stop dropping acid.
Several Marines and sailors assigned to the 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina have tested positive for LSD use amid a sweep of recent tests for the drug, the service announced on Monday.
According to a recent anti-drug PSA published in the Defense Visual Information Distribution System, a number of “recent incidents” involving either Marines and sailors induced division leaders to carry out random LSD testing starting this summer.
Before those incidents, Marine Corps officials would have required probable cause for search rather than relying on random screening, according to the service.
So far, personnel have conducted nearly 4,000 tests since the start of the summer with “several” positives.
“We have a drug problem in the 2d Marine Division,” Maj. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, commanding general, said in a statement. “We are changing the way in which we test for illegal substances.”
Division officials did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The division’s crackdown on LSD use in the ranks comes months after the Naval Criminal Investigative Service issued a warning to sailors and Marines to avoid purchasing LSD in the dark corners of the Internet.
As Task & Purpose has previously reported, LSD is already an (unofficial) staple of virtually every corner of the U.S. military, including its especially-sensitive nuclear enterprise.
Indeed, dozens of sailors assigned to the nuclear reactor department aboard the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier were punished in connection to an LSD ring aboard the vessel in 2018.
And last year, 14 airmen responsible for protecting the Pentagon’s nuclear missile silos at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming were disciplined for dropping acid between shifts.
What’s the solution to this striking resurgence of acid use within the ranks? At least one Marine officer made the argument that, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, at least in terms of microdosing for matters of intelligence analysis.
At the moment, it looks like at least some members of the 2nd Marine Division took that advice a bit too literally — and now they’re paying the price.
“We are committed to identifying violators of our ethos,” Donovan said in a statement. “The vast majority of Marines within the 2d Marine Division routinely uphold our core values, and they deserve to know that the Marines to their left and right are doing the same.”