Down near the end of the article is the truth:
“The VA is the world’s largest provider of substance abuse services, caring for more than 350,000 veterans per year, of whom about 30,000 are being treated for opiate addiction. Only preliminary information for Iraq and Afghanistan is available, however, and veterans of those conflicts are not yet showing up in the stats.”
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Despite the hopeful “not yet”, you can bet the truth is very near zero......I say this because the VA loooooovvveesss anything it can claim to increase its own budget of money to waste..............after 6 years of being in Afghanistan, it just isn’t happening, no matter how hard the lefties wish for or try to conjure it......and you can bet that the vast, vast majority of “opiate” cases the VA cites are legitimate Rx’s that they themselves Rx to veterans for legitimate purposes that got out of hand.
Afghanistan and Iraq are not producing the junkies so desirable and dear to the lefties.
I have in-processed almost 1,500 OEF/OIF disability claims in the last four years in my small VA Regional Office and the total number of opiate-dependent veterans I have seen among them is — exactly zero. The “30,000” figure alluded to in the article is (I would bet) 90% from the period 1967-1980 when the US military went to hell and had to be recovered.