A war hero becomes a victim of the war on drugs

Phil Carter goes too easy on the military on this one.

The smile he beamed at the medal ceremony masked months of problems he says he had since returning home with battle wounds: a suicide attempt along with flashbacks and nightmares so bad he resorted to binge drinking to fall asleep.

"I kind of felt like I was blowing in the wind pretty much," said Turner, 23, of Indianapolis, who was an Army medic.

After going AWOL for two days and smoking marijuana while drunk, he said he got a general discharge from the Army rather than an honorable discharge.

That means he is not eligible for at least $40,000 in college funding he expected to receive. The Army also demoted him from specialist to private before his discharge.

Phil, smoking pot is a far cry from "drug use." And doing it stateside hardly puts his "buddies at risk."

They should be supplying marijuana to any soldier returning from Iraq who wants it, since the alternatives are the Big Pharma drugs they're giving the vets -- the very drugs that are in many cases the likely cause of sleeplessness, anxiety, and paranoi that the vets are suffering upon returning.