Tobacco Facts.

Smoking could be banned in the military by 2020, if the recommendations of a recently released study are accepted by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

The study, commissioned in 2007 by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, offers solutions to the high cost of smoking from active duty and veterans’ health and lost productivity viewpoints.

According to MSNBC reporter Alex Johnson, “the study completed late last month by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences recommends closing ‘the pipeline of new tobacco users entering the military’ by prohibiting tobacco use in the service academies and officer-training programs like ROTC and eventually instituting a total ban on all use of tobacco by active-duty personnel.”

To be sure, the health consequences of tobacco use in the military and among veterans are high. The study suggests costs in the billions of dollars.

But so are the health consequences high from bombs, missiles and bullets. There will be no study commissioned by the Department of Defense that recommends banning the weapons of war.

While pinning down real health costs is impossible — they can be estimated but not measured precisely — some studies suggest the abuse of alcohol among troops has even higher costs than the use of tobacco.

While bombs will never be prohibited, alcohol could be the next vice to be banned in the military.

But alcohol use is still fashionable. Tobacco has become evil and its lobby weakened.

So, tobacco could legitimately be banned. A total ban on all tobacco use might mean the Uniform Code of Military Justice would be changed to incorporate verbiage making use of tobacco by military personnel illegal.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ, 64 Statute. 109, 10 U.S.C. Chapter 47) is the foundation of military law in the United States. It applies to all members of the U.S. armed services.

Placed alongside other heinous crimes outlined in the UCMJ, like espionage, murder, extortion and assault, the article and section banning tobacco use might read something like this:

925. ART. 125. TOBACCO USE

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in the use of tobacco of any kind is guilty of tobacco use. Inhalation, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of tobacco use shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

I specifically picked Section 925, Article 125 of the UCMJ as the proposed section and article prohibiting tobacco use. I did this because Section 925, Article 125 of the UCMJ is likely to be available for the tobacco ban soon.

The current Section 925, article 125 of the UCMJ is the ban on sodomy.

I wonder if I’m alone in finding it a very strange dichotomy that the Department of Defense is seriously considering a ban on tobacco use in the military while at the very same time they are considering repealing the ban on homosexual activity in the military?

To be correct, while the Department of Defense is considering the affects of lifting the gay ban, it does not have the authority to actually lift the ban.

The UCMJ — and its prohibition against sodomy — is codified in federal law, specifically Title 10 of the U.S. Code. Congress must change the UCMJ, making sodomy legal (or more accurately, making it not illegal), to truly lift the gay ban.

The UCMJ presently has this to say about sodomy:

925. ART. 125. SODOMY

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.

(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

We should avoid calling it “unnatural” because we don’t want to offend anyone who may engage in such acts.

Yet, I suppose carnal copulation with animals may still have to be banned in the UCMJ until it, too, becomes acceptable. Because sex with animals is unhealthy. Just like tobacco use.


© Copyright: Havenews

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