Busy Summer this year, so I’m going to wait to start my next long story, which is written and ready to go - it shows a more nuanced picture, for better or worse, of a Command Sergeant Major, relative to the humorous background character thrown into Back to the Army Again. 35 pages. In the meantime, I’ve got a few shorter comics that are basically one-liners or bits of dialogue that I wasn’t able to work into a larger story, and which I’ll use to break up the larger ones when it’s finally time to lay out the book.
The first one of these is “Too Much Pot,” and is, as is often the case with my writing, an entire conversation verbatim, which took place in Iraq between two of my NCOs back in 2009. Obviously the subject’s name has been changed. The individual was indeed chaptered on redeployment, for the drug use that was caught in a piss test before he deployed. Everyone in the Battalion who was in the same boat got the same treatment - welcome back from Iraq, thanks for your service, here’s your general discharge, get the fuck out.
Now, as a Company and later Battalion Commander I did continue to enforce the Army’s drug testing policies and ban on marijuana use: them’s the rules, I don’t make ‘em. You’ve come to the wrong shop for anarchy, and so forth. With that being said, I’ve certainly seen testing for marijuana, in particular, treated less as a safety and discipline issue and as more of a force-shaping tool, where, with the exception of people like pilots, using it is an instant discharge if the economy’s bad and the recruiters are doing fine, but it’s a bust down to E1 and a stern warning not to do it again if the Army’s hurting for warm bodies. This has been increasingly true since it was legalized almost everywhere in the country, which was not the case in 2009. Certainly, at this point, “Schmuckatelli pissed hot” now elicits the question, “for pot, or something serious?” Our Canadian allies have of course stopped testing for marijuana entirely, except for pilots and if the individual appears intoxicated on duty, and they have apparently avoided disaster therefrom. It will probably take one more cycle of “hurting for warm bodies” before the United States follows suit.