Smoking Ban

Recently my friend Jen over at Crazy Shenanigans posted a blog about her soldier's smoking habit and her distaste for this yucky habit. Check it out, here. My soldier and hubby, Kevin has smoked since I met him. While this hasn't been one of my favorite things about him, it was part of who he is/was so I accepted it. The entire time we were dating it just wasn't an issue for me, he always smoked outside and always held his smoking hand out of the window when he would smoke in the car. Well something just seemed to change (like the flip of a switch) within my own person once Kevin and I got married. Suddenly his smoking habit really bugged me. The closet stunk from his dirty clothes, which meant my clothes now smelled like smoke too.. it was suddenly (and very dramatically- on my part) hard to breathe in the car... this list of why his smoking bugged me goes on and on and on. But at the end of the day it just came down to the fact that smoking causes disease and kills folks. It's fact. Bottom line: I didn't want to watch my husband die, slowly, painfully and before his time. Not something on the TOP of my list of "things to do before I die". So I did talk to Kevin about quitting and why it was important to me. I knew from other experiences that it wouldn't get me anywhere to pressure him and force him to quit for me... and really I tried very hard to not do this. We went down the road of him "quitting" many times and unsuccessfully. Each time he would start up again I would tell him he better not be doing it just for me because we'd done that before and I didn't want to be jerked around again... I told him if he was going to quit he needed to do it for himself and not for me. ALL the same currently my hubby is smoke free and managed to accomplish this in the middle of the desert on his 3rd deployment.

After a study was performed, the Pentagon is considering enforcing a complete smoking ban on the military, including stopping the sale of tobacco products on post. Hmmm.. personally I think this is ridiculous. On the other hand, most things are controlled by the military if you are active duty so is it really a stretch to ban smoking? I mean they can stop your pay and enforce (even) longer more extended hours and disguise it at reprimand. My initial reaction is that it would be completely unconstitutional. Our soldiers fight for our freedoms (in theory)... whether I like smoking or agree with it, it's not really up to me (or the Pentagon) to decide that others (or our military) are not permitted to make the choice for themselves. For those of you that has spent time around the military smoking is apart of the culture, you know it's just kind of what they do. Taking that away, I think, would lower moral and only increase disdain on the part of our military. I'm thinking enforcing just one more life-altering term of service would further decrease enlistment numbers. Well no one asked me so I doubt "they'll" care. But please check out the full story here.