In the early 1980s recreational drugs flooded the cities and were sold routinely in parks and on the streets. In front of the detoxification ward, sleeping pills were sold by the patients just discharged, to the passersby. No kidding.

Residents were no exception. Many of them used those recreational drugs,at least marijuana, which was the cheapest among them. There was circumstantial evidence for it. Hemostats, scissors-like surgical instruments to stop bleeding by pinching arteries, were the instruments most often stolen from the OR by residents (probably).
Hemostats were used as roach clips when they smoked joints.
As for attending doctors, they could afford to buy cocaine. Quite a few attendings were Vietnam veterans, and they used drugs often.
Some of the residents were the habitual user of cocaine and forced to undergo the treatment by the residency director.

Lastly I'm going to introduce you a sad story about a surgical resident whom I got acquainted with during my surgical rotation. He was a short, red haired, white guy. He was an outspoken resident and hard worker, too. He seemed to compensate for his short statue by his activities. On a cold winter morning, he was found dead in a bathroom at Kings County Hospital.
The investigation revealed that he was a habitual cocaine user and supposedly died of an overdose.

Even in Japan the illegal use of those drugs among medical personnel is sometimes reported by the media. Those reports always remind me the sad story of the surgical resident in Brooklyn.

Annotation:

Roach clips: the instrument to pinch a marijuana cigarette. By using it you can avoid heat when the cigarette becomes short. Roach (short form of cockroach) means the marijuana cigarette at the end of burning, when very small.

Joints: a marijuana cigarette