Pentagon Walls Off Head Drug Study

All kinds of folks -- ranging from Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli to individual soldiers and their families -- have expressed serious concern about the growing use and abuse of prescription drugs by troops engaged in combat over the past decade.

But until recently it has been hard to quantify the extent of the problem: How many troops have been prescribed head drugs, by type and dosage?

It looks like someone has finally answered that question, but the Defense Department does not want me (or you) to know.

The Defense Health Board, an advisory committee to the Secretary of Defense, has a Psychotropic Medication and Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Work Group subcommittee which has been poking around the head drug use issue for what looks like about a year.

At a meeting of the Defense Health Board last month, that subcommittee delivered a report on its head drug work. This included the tantalizing fact that a study had been done on the in-theater use of psychotropic drugs over a three and a half year period with information drawn from the Theater Data Medical Store database.

The report also said an Army Mental Health Advisory Team had collected data on medication use in theater, another way to get a handle on head drug use.

I asked both the Pentagon press desk and a contract spokeswoman for the Defense Health Board for these reports as well as transcripts of the meetings where they were discussed.

The answer to this polite query: The ins and outs of the rules on federal advisory subcommittees means that the Defense Health Board does not have to give me the information I requested.

I think Defense is trying to hide an awful truth.