Ask Auntie Pinko
June 20, 2002

Dear Auntie Pinko,

Isn't it in our best interest to prohibit smoking in the armed forces? Why are they allowed to smoke? If people in prison are being punished why are they allowed to have cigarettes?

Keith,
Denton, TX

 
Dear Keith,

There's a little thing called "the law of diminishing returns" that strongly influences these matters. Roughly, it says that if the cost of enforcing a rule is greater than the cost of whatever might result from not having that rule, one should probably consider very very carefully indeed before implementing that rule.

The cases of military personnel and prisoners, for example, involve two entirely different sets of cost measurements. For starters, let's consider the physical aspects of military facilities versus those of prisons. Item: Persons in the military presumably are there voluntarily-that is, large numbers of them are not necessarily going to leave a military facility if there are breaches in security. This is not the case in prisons and jails, which forces upon prisons and jails a physical construction that does not make it practical or cost effective to provide facilities where inmates may smoke without exposing non-smokers to the environmental hazards they produce.

As you may be aware, the trend is toward the prohibition of smoking in many penal systems. The law of diminishing returns has been reviewed, and the costs of permitting inmates to smoke-the potential lawsuits from non-smoking inmates and staff for exposing them to smoke and the costs of providing health care for an aging population of smokers being the most potent-seem to outweigh the costs of maintaining internal order while newly-committed inmates go through withdrawal and of policing for yet one more contraband item.

Auntie Pinko is not a Constitutional lawyer. I am certain that there will be much debate on the issue, but as conviction and remanding to correctional facilities allows many of prisoners' other constitutional rights to be de facto suspended at least for the duration, this probably provides penal institutions with the necessary legal grounds for prohibiting tobacco.

However, military personnel are not sui juris-their relationship with the government is a voluntary contract. The military, therefore, has different factors to evaluate in applying the law of diminishing returns. These include the greater physical flexibility of most military facilities to shield non-smokers from the effects of smoke, the need to maintain a steady pool of qualified recruits to all branches of service, awareness of the demographics of their recruit pools, the decreasing participant numbers and increasing constraints on benefits within the active and veterans health care services, etc.

So far, for the military, they have been able to balance the costs of permitting restricted tobacco use against the costs of prohibition, on the side of license. They do provide copious assistance in the form of smoking cessation programs and drugs. From a constitutional standpoint, as long as tobacco remains a legal drug, Auntie Pinko thinks that's probably the best possible compromise. (Although I also favor pricing cigarettes in the PX at a rate equal to the mean national cost, to ensure that there are as few positive incentives to smoke as possible.)

Remember, Keith, it's all taxpayer dollars we're talking about here, so close attention to the law of diminishing returns works in all our favor. Thanks for consulting Auntie!

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