No More Smoking In Military -- Lotsa Luck With That One!

July 15th, 2009
Because tobacco costs the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs folks $846 million annually in lost productivity and health care, we are going to stop the troops from smoking. With classes and education and we are going to phase this in progressively.
Yes, we must actually be that stupid. Telling people they cannot do something simply does not stop people from doing it. Period. Anybody who studies anything knows this.
Okay, anybody reading this think of anything you want except a blue horse.
Now, admit it. You are maybe thinking of a horse with a light blue coat and a royal blue mane, or vice versa.
They call it the "forbidden fruit." God said to Adam and Eve, fruits are OK from any tree in the garden except THAT one, and Eve needed the fruit from THAT tree.
One of my best examples of this principle comes from earliest childhood. My brother of blessed memory, who was somewhere between two and three, liked to explore the environment by touching and sniffing. We had the home ceremony for Passover, with the "matzo," or unleavened bread that is supposed to replicate what the Children of Israel had to eat while trekking across the desert. My little brother had not even hit the table when both mother of blessed memory and grandmother of blessed memory told him, "whatever you do, don't sniff the matzo."
That night, my brother went to the emergency room of the Massachusetts Eye Ear Nose and Throat Infirmary with Inhaled Matzo. They were apparently just barely able to remove it from his airway.
These events were, even to me at four or five years old, very clearly connected.
When someone tells you not to do something, you want to do it more.
Flash forward to me as fresh new young military officer. I knew the men drank, and it seemed to get them in fights and trouble. It was only a civilian employee attached to the military who dared to tell me what everyone else knew. Drinking had been prohibited in the military. I was shocked. "But everybody drinks..." Well drugging was illegal, too, but there was this guy high on cocaine wearing war paint or something, demolishing cars downtown on a night I had been on duty. It was explained gently to me, that he was off duty. Actually, many had wondered if there were not more drinking since it had been prohibited on base. It was not offered at official military functions anymore. Nobody had any trouble cooking up unofficial functions and ripping open a few buttons so they were out of uniform and making a run to get some alcohol and/or drugs.
All you can ever do in the military is stop people from doing something on duty. My learned and experienced guess is that they will rip off their uniforms and do it after duty.
Our population is so heterogeneous that Darwinian evolution does not apply. We are not going to spontaneously get better on this. Especially, I think, with adolescent males, the more you are told you cannot do something, the sweeter it will be when you do it successfully.
This does apply to large populations.
Harry S. Truman was awfully wise for a haberdasher, let alone a president. He said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. We are now far enough along in our own history that few people are still alive who remember prohibition. Although the 1919 Volstead Act overrode President Wilson's veto, little was done to enforce this prohibition of public sale of alcohol. It lasted through the twenties and thirties, so that most people count the years of American prohibition of alcohol for public use from 1930 to 1933. The resultant intrigue and glamour sings in books, movies, and memories of flamboyant characters. Perhaps most important of all, so many Americans were systematically breaking the law by accessing alcohol in illegal ways that some modern historians date America's general distrust of its own government from these events.
So by prohibiting tobacco in the military, I suspect we would be making it less available. It becomes likely to be a sort of currency, a reward for other illicit activities ... .
Anyone who actually studied and knew anything about human behavior would know that positive rewards go a great deal further to shape behavior than punishments.
How about a medal for being smoke-free for a certain period of time?
How about "patriotic cigarettes;" something you can put in your mouth and burn that is neither tobacco nor hemp? Proceeds from sale go to charities for military support.
I know they are planning smoking cessation classes. I also know soldiers hate classes. Give rewards, start now, make them relevant. That works in changing behavior, not enforcement.
In this land of freedom, we need to leave people the right to make poor choices. To really change behavior, we "catch" people doing something right. Can we bring in officers and enlistees who do not smoke at higher pay? How do we know they are telling the truth, even after a class? People who are addicted to anything tend to hide it. They will do this somewhat for rewards, they will do it a LOT more if they want to smoke and are not allowed to. Will they all break into a run after an official meeting to get somewhere where they can smoke? Reward, reward, reward.
Maybe, not "smoke-free," which is negative, but the "strong American lung" program. Reward high respiratory capacity, not terribly hard to check, as a gift to the country. Ought to be able to run for your life faster and carry more, which is generally what it is all about.
No, the military will not think of these things. Not only have they not integrated the lessons of the past, creativity is not their strong suit. Which is one of many reasons why I am out here and not in there.