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Steinbeck wrote that soldiers were supplied dextro-amphetamine by the army in survival kits given to soldiers in the field, and that pharmacists in the port of Hong Kong, an R&R center, sold "all manner of barbiturates, and other prescriptive drugs, to military personnel without a prescription." Writing that soldiers eschewed incapacitating opium, "a drug for old men in this part of Asia," he added:
After opium, what remains are the fields and jungles of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, which for thousands of years have been the natural home of the ever-popular Cannabis sativa, or marijuana. It has a more powerful brother known as hashish or kif or plain hemp. It is basically the same cannabis plant, but it is richer in resins, and thus in intoxicating tars when smoked or eaten. Unlike opium, which is a body drug rather than a mind drug, you can learn to function normally with marijuana. In the southern areas, the best of this plant comes from Cambodia, and the vast majority of “good stuff” comes across the border via the Ho Chi Minh trail, the same route made famous by the Viet Cong—a fairly romantic migration.
For the most part, the drug is cheaper and easier to find in Vietnam than a package of Lucky Strikes. It might be interesting to find out if the derivation of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s slogan, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” might not have come from the revered Arab expression, “A puff of kif in the morning makes a man as strong as a hundred camels in the courtyard.” In any case, marijuana is as easy to find in Vietnam as a Vietnamese national, and you needn’t find one to find the other.
Steinbeck remarked that "practically no civil or military controls" were used to inhibit the smoking of marijuana, not so much as "a matter of kindness" but for practical reasons. "To enforce a prohibition against smoking the plant would be like trying to prohibit the inhalation of smog in Los Angeles."
