All wars have casualties.

     Fred Foster first became one roughly 30 years ago in Viet Nam.  Fred was then a teenage boy from Michigan answering his country's call to service, slogging through the mud to shoot and kill other young men he did not know, for reasons he did not quite understand.

     Fred was one of the lucky ones this country sent there in that he came back.  At the time he thought he was not a casualty.  That the only casualties were the other enlisted men with him who had been shot, or the Vietnamese he and other G.I.'s had shot.

     But Fred came back with the nightmares many carry when they survive war, and he also came back with a taste for drugs he has acquired in Viet Nam, where the drugs were plentiful and the officers didn't care.

     Fred was a casualty of that war.  He carried with him the demons of what he had seen... and of what he had done.  He never used it as an excuse, and seldom even talked about the war, but more than 20 years later, Fred began counseling to deal with the demons.

     On coming back to the states right after his tour of duty in Viet Nam, Fred got married, and tried to have children.  But before he and his wife could have a child, Fred got into some minor trouble with the law and briefly ended up in prison.  While he was in prison, Fred's wife became pregnant.  Though the child could not have been his, Fred embraced the child as his own on his release.

     Even when his wife filed for divorce a short time later, Fred never tried to deny the child, paid child support and visited as much as he could.  Then when she remarried and her new husband wanted to adopt the boy Fred treated as his son, Fred reluctantly agreed... because they convinced him it would be best for the boy.

     Nearly two decades later, Fred still kept a framed picture of him and the boy, showing the photo of his son to friends he would have in his home.  Unable to admit what had happened, he would say the boy died in a car accident.  At times, when he was alone, Fred would also watch a videotape of the boy's favorite movie, one Fred and the boy had watched together several times.  It was a kid's movie.  And when Fred watched it alone he never laughed at the funny parts.  He simply cried.

     Fred moved to the Chattanooga area in the 80's, and along the way continued to use the drugs he had first tried in Viet Nam.  He also drank.  Heavily.  He didn't become violent when drinking or using drugs.  But he did get into some more trouble with the law.  Public intoxication.  Driving Under the Influence.  Drug possession.  Trespass.  The kind of stupid things people do when they are drunk.

     But he worked the entire time.  He paid his bills.  He helped others when he could.  And along the way a well-intentioned dentist, trying to help him cope with pain from some dental work, prescribed Fred a drug called Lortab, a terribly addictive pain killer.

     Fred had always been prone to addiction, and the Lortab got him quickly.  He began forging prescriptions to get more.  And he was caught.  Charged with ten counts.  The officer arresting him said he could have charged him with 30 counts and proved them all, but the first judge looking at the case said ten was enough.

     When the case went before Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Steve Bevill in 1994, Fred owned up to what he had done and pled guilty.  Judge Bevill, much to his credit, listened to testimony at the sentencing hearing and agreed that Fred was not so much a danger to society as he was a danger to himself.  Despite Fred's prior problems with the law, Judge Bevill put Fred on ten years probation instead of putting him in prison.

     One of the conditions of the probation was that Fred go to Alcoholics Anonymous at least seven times a week.  Fred did.  And AA helped him.  He even sponsored other recovering alcoholics and drug users and helped them get clean.

     When his father was dying two years ago, even though his father had treated Fred badly as a child and as an adult, Fred drove home 600 miles to visit, to let his father know that all was forgiven, and to simply be there.

     During the seven years I knew Fred one of the traits that impressed me most was his reluctance to blame others for his problems or to hold a grudge.  He recognized his problems as his own... and was so aware of his own shortcomings he didn't look for them in others.

     Earlier this year, after about five or six years on supervised probation, Judge Bevill even agreed to reduce the total time he would be on probation to eight years and ended the supervision of Fred's probation.

     Fred then started seeing a woman he said he had fallen in love with.  His spirits were high and he told friends he was going to ask her to marry him.

     Unfortunately Fred could not resist the lure of the same drugs he had been using before.  In a matter of months he was once again using Lortab, forging prescriptions again to get it.

     And once again narcotics officers noticed the pattern of forged prescriptions and came after Fred, leaving messages that they wanted to talk with him.

     Fred had been through it before.  He knew the interview would lead to an arrest and multiple new charges.... and revocation of his probation.... and doing his eight year sentence in prison.

     So yesterday, instead of being sent to prison in this nation's longest war, the war on drugs, a war we are no closer to "winning" today than we were when we declared it roughly 30 years ago, at the same time Fred was first becoming a casualty in another foolish war.... Fred again became a casualty of war.  He parked his car in a small garage, turned on the engine, and gassed himself to death.

     There are many, many other casualties in the war on drugs, and like with Fred, most of them are casualties that will never be reported on the news so you will never hear of them.  And certainly lives are also harmed by the used of drugs.... but Fred and most other drug users are able to function reasonably well even when using, and never hurt another person as a result of their use.

     Fred was a good person.  So are a lot of other people who use drugs, or who have used drugs in the past.

     We are losing the war on drugs, and nothing will change that... but even if we were able to "win", it would lot be worth the price of a single person like Fred.

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