U. S. Army gave soldiers cannabinoids in psywar test
‘Everything just seems funny in the Army.’ — military THC test subject
Conquest By Cannabinoids
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream
By FRED GARDNER
[Excerpts]
The U.S. Army, in a search for “non-lethal incapacitating agents,” tested cannabis-based drugs on GI volunteers throughout the 1960s according to James Ketchum, MD, the psychiatrist who led the classified research program at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Ketchum retired as a colonel in 1976 and now lives in Santa Rosa. He has written a memoir, “Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten,” in which he describes experiments conducted at Edgewood and staunchly defends the Army’s ethical standards.
Ketchum excerpts an interview with a GI on EA 2233 in his book. The responses are pretty much what you’d expect from someone who had ingested mucho THC being questioned by an unthreatening authority figure.
Q: How are you?
A: Pretty good, I guess.
Q: Pretty good?
A: Well, not so good maybe.
Q: You’ve got a big grin on your face.
A: Yeah. I don’t know what I’m grinning about either….
Q: Suppose you had to get up and go to work now. How would you do?
A: I don’t think I’d even care.
Q: Suppose the place was on fire?
A: I don’t think it would be — it would seem funny.
Q: It would seem funny? Do you think you’d have the sense to get up and run out or do you think you’d just enjoy it?
A: I don’t know. Fire doesn’t seem to present any danger to me right now. [Note the realism of the test subject and the scientist's flight of fancy.]
Q: Can you think of anything now which would seem hazardous or worry you or are you just in a–
A: No. No. Everything just seems funny in the Army. Seems like everything somebody says, it sounds a little bit funny.
[Thanks to Richard Lake of The Media Awareness Project for posting this on Preston Peet's DrugWar.com discussion list. --JS]
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