My mistake, you are right. During World War One, the government provided cigarettes to soldiers to help ease boredom and reduce stress. Prior to the war, less

My mistake, you are right. During World War One, the government provided cigarettes to soldiers to help ease boredom and reduce stress. Prior to the war, less than 0.5% of American people regularly consumed cigarettes. By the war’s end, approximately 14 million cigarettes were distributed daily. According to Lukasz Kamienski, a political science professor at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora, and author of Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War, cocaine also became a drug of abuse on the frontlines. People turned to the drug to boost energy, combat fatigue, and reduce wartime anxiety. It gained popularity when the British army created a drug known as “Forced March,” a combination of cocaine and a cola nut extract. People then began to self-prescribe the drug as a wartime aid. Many of the soldiers’ wives and girlfriends sent packages of cocaine and heroin purchased from London pharmacists labeled as “useful presents for friends at the front” or sometimes “welcome presents for friends at the front.” https://recovery.org/addiction/wartime/ https://recovery.org/addiction/wartime/