Study Aims At High Military Smoking Rate

  NEWS

Feb. 12 - KGO (KGO) -- A UC San Francisco study tries to find answers to the high rate of smoking in the military. Researchers say a big part of the problem is the cheap cigarettes made available to our service men and women.

It is perhaps one of the more memorable photos that has emerged from the Iraq war -- a soldier with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

According to data gathered by UCSF researchers, smoking is more prevalent among the military population. More than a third smoke, compared to almost a quarter of the civilian population.

Ruth Malone and Elizabeth Smith spent three years trying to figure out why.

Ruth Malone, Ph.D., UCSF Researcher: "There's a long history of tobacco in the military. We used to give out free cigarettes, with the ration packets and that stopped sometime back, but we basically still in many ways are subsidizing them."

What these researchers are talking about are the relatively cheap cigarettes available at military bases. Whether in the U.S. or abroad, active duty personnel have been able to buy them tax-free at commissaries and exchanges.

Elizabeth Smith, Ph.D., UCSF Researcher: "Everything at commissaries is discounted, however, all the other products in the commissaries are not killing service members and I think that's really the key distinction."

As early as the mid-1980's, congress has tried to increase cigarette prices at military bases. Those efforts, however, have repeatedly failed.

Researchers say the tobacco industry pressured lawmakers to keep the prices down. But Mark Wilder, who used to smoke during his years at an Army post overseas, says had prices gone up, it wouldn't have made a difference.

He says tax-free cigarettes at bases has no bearing on the military's higher smoking rate.

Mark Wilder, Army Sergeant: "If you only have two places to buy cigarettes in a 14 square mile area, it's not going to encourage you to smoke. It's actually going to discourage you."

Even so, UCSF researchers say the practice of selling tax-free cigarettes on military bases must stop.

Ruth Malone, Ph.D., UCSF Researcher: "Given what we know about tobacco and how much it hurts our troops, this is really an issue that needs to be taken up again."

The UCSF study was based on interviews with high-ranking military officials as well as millions of internal tobacco industry documents. Their findings can be found in the latest edition of the Tobacco Journal.

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