I read today in Army Times Online: A recent report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, called for eliminating tobacco sales at all military installations and setting a “specific, mandatory date by which the military will be tobacco-free.”
The Secretary of Defense agreed with the assessment that smoking is not good for one's health, but he declined to place a ban on smoking for the troops. Personally, I quit smoking many years ago. It's definitely not good for you. But then a bullet in the butt isn't good for you either, so I say if those who place their lives on the line every day choose to smoke, then that's their business.
Somehow, however, I suspect this issue will come up again, and maybe in the future smoking will be a banned substance for those in the military . . . given that it's easier to enforce such a ban on those in the military, as opposed to doing the same thing in the civilian world.
