Smoking a problem in the military
Jerry Rimmele of Minooka began smoking when he was 15 years old and quit for good three years later. But his resolve lasted only seven months after he entered the military.
"I went into the service and these guys lit up every time they had a break, so I started smoking again," Rimmele, 66, said. "They even put cigarettes in our rations. You got a box with peanut butter and jelly, things like that, and they'd include cigarettes, Lucky Strikes of all things."
Rimmele hopes the smoking situation in the military has changed, but statistics aren't encouraging.
According to the June report "Combating Tobacco in Military and Veteran Populations" by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., use of tobacco in the military has risen since 1998 even though previous decades had seen a decline.
Is service in Afghanistan and Iraq partly to blame? The rate of smoking among those military personnel may be 50 percent higher than those who did not go there. Overall, 30 percent of active-duty military personnel and 22 percent of veterans use tobacco as opposed to fewer than 20 percent of Americans.
And that use comes with a hefty price tag.
The Defense Department spends more than $1.6 billion a year on tobacco-related medical care, increased hospitalizations and lost work days. In 2008, the Veterans Affairs Department spent more than $5 billion treating veterans with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also linked to tobacco use.
Since the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department commissioned the study, it is to be seen if they follow up on its recommendations. These include banning all tobacco use on military installations, starting with military academies and officer training programs for both new recruits and active-duty personnel.
Other recommendations include halting discounts on tobacco products in military commissaries and exchanges, with the eventual goal of stopping all sales, requiring VA locations to be smoke-free and engaging top officials at the defense and Veterans Affairs departments to enforce comprehensive tobacco-control programs.
Rimmele wouldn't mind seeing those changes because he has witnessed firsthand the consequences of tobacco use.
His wife Jan, 51, quit smoking in April after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Rimmele now smokes only outside the house and pays $5 a day for the pleasure while struggling to meet the costs of Jan's cancer treatments which, until recently, he did without her having health insurance.
"Smoking relaxes me," Rimmele said.
His best advise to beat the addiction? Don't ever start.
"I was young and dumb," Rimmele said. "My father smoked and my friends smoked. Those tobacco companies, they know what they're doing."
