Leading Marines in the 21st Century

One year ago today I was given the right to call myself a Marine. I was going to try to think up something profound to say for the occasion. Then I came into work yesterday.

Some background. Enlisted Marines also go through engineer school; their curriculum takes about two months, ours takes three and a half. Their classes are 20-30 Marines, mostly consisting of Privates and Privates First Class with the odd Lance Corporal in the mix. They typically go to boot camp, get their 10 days boot leave, go through a month of Marine Combat Training (infantry training for non-infantry Marines), then come here. Some of them graduated from high school in June, some worked for a year or two after high school, a few worked for several years.

Marines get safety briefs before they go on leave or liberty to remind them that they are valuable to their units and to encourage them not to do things that will result in injury or brig/jail time. For special liberty periods (three- or four-day weekends, days off in the middle of the week, etc.), they will typically get more extensive or varied safety briefs. We've had many of these special liberty periods lately, and some time in the past couple months, the Marines got a brief from our Substance Abuse Control Officer (SACO). In this brief, he told them, among other things, about some new ways that Marines have been getting high lately, and added that the Marine Corps couldn't test for them.

Well, guess what? There was an inspection in the barracks this past Thursday night, and they found drug paraphernalia as well as raw materials to do exactly what the SACO told them. An entire class of 20-30 enlisted Marines was implicated. They're obviously all in a whole boatload of trouble right now, and it's an embarrassment to my company, but as someone that is not involved in the situation, I have the luxury of stepping back to ask my questions.

First of all, given the magnitude of the wrong-doing, what mix of discipline and punishment is appropriate? (The object of discipline being a modification of behavior, the object of punishment being to deter others from making the same mistake.)

More importantly, what could have been done to prevent something like this? (Aside from the obvious: don't give them "safety briefs" telling them new ways to get high. But they can come up with this stuff on their own, too.) It's likely that this was started by two or three Marines that drew the rest of the class in. All it would have taken to severely limit or completely shut them down would have been one Marine that had the courage to tell them they were wrong and to report them if they didn't stop.
Where did we fail the Marines? Moral leadership is part of our profession; where was that breakdown? Additional safety briefs likely wouldn't have made a difference, but on some level they didn't receive the moral leadership they needed. Given the circumstances of how and when they get here, it's possible that there's nothing we could have done to prevent this. But if there was, what signs did we miss that indicated that something needed to be done?

It's unlikely I'll run into a problem of this magnitude in the operating forces, as regular platoons have NCO leadership to stem problems like this. But I've heard multiple other first-hand stories with similar wrong-doing and implications. How can I impress upon my Marines the importance of upright character and moral courage?
This is the heart of what it means to lead Marines: asking what are my Marines' deficiencies? Professional? Physical? Moral? Then helping them become better Marines, better people.

Yesterday, as I was walking out of class, a bunch of Marines were lined up in the hall, waiting to talk to the First Sergeant. They knew that I knew why they were there, but one of them didn't forget that she was a Marine: she gave me the proper greeting of the day as I passed.

They make mistakes, but they're still Marines, and they're still our Marines. Hopefully the rest of them will remember that, too.