Smokers cost US military over $130 million a year

The association of smoking and the cost of military training 2001;10:43-7

Smokers cost the US military over $130 million a year, almost 1 per cent of the total annual training budget, shows research in Tobacco Control. Smoking was the single biggest predictor of premature discharge from duty, the study found.

The research team tracked around 29,000 recruits in the US Air Force over 12 months. This section of the military has the lowest prevalence of smoking among its ranks at 28.5 per cent, as opposed to the Marines where the prevalence is almost 45 per cent.

At the end of 12 months 14 per cent of new recruits had been discharged, for which the single best predictor was smoking. Almost twice as many smokers as non-smokers were discharged prematurely, with almost one in five smokers compared with one in 12 non-smokers discharged in the first year of service.

The average cost to train one recruit in any of the service branches of the US military is $28,800; the overall cost if an annual $14 billion. The US Department of Defense estimates that excess training costs for smokers in the US Air Force amount to $18 million a year. Applied across all the services, this comes to over $130 million a year, conclude the authors.

The authors point out that smoking may be part of a constellation of underlying behaviours and attitudes, but suggest that campaigns to help recruits kick the habit might save a lot of money.

Contact:

Dr Robert Klesges, Center for Community Health, University of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. bklesges@memphis.edu