CIGARETTES FROM THE SKIES HELPED SOLDIERS SURVIVE

AFTER COMING under fire for the first time during the Vietnam war, I lit up
a cigarette.

On another patrol, a Marine was killed by a booby trap on a jungle trail a
hundred yards behind me. Twenty of us had walked right over that device
without setting it off. Time to spark a match. Inhaling on that
death-bearing cig seemed to offer the promise I'd walk out of the infernal
mudhole alive.

Almost all the grunts on the front lines smoked, but it wasn't the Marine
Corps that led me to pick up the habit. I'd put the blame on those wily VC
in black pajamas hiding in the treetops. Not agents of Joe Camel, but they
served the same purpose.

Then too, the source of the cigarettes was a wonder to behold. They fell
out of the sky.

The resupply choppers came in with 4 main goodies: mail, ammo, C-rations
and free cigarettes in sample packages of four. You could scoop up as many
of these slender little boxes as you wanted. Very satisfying after ham and
lima beans from a can.

I thought about this after reading in The Examiner last Sunday that more
than 8,000 vets had filed disability claims for smoking-related injuries
because they picked up the habit in the heat of battle. Only combat-zone
vets could apply. The claim rests on the fact that free cigarettes landed
in Vietnam, Korea and all over the theater of operations during World War
II.

A 1993 legal opinion from Mary Lou Keener, general counsel for the Veterns
Administration, concluded that vets had the right to make such claims. Last
year, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated there could be as many
as 2.5 million claims of this nature filed over the next 10 years. The
costs of smoking-related compensation would be in the billions of dollars.
In a kind of preemptive strike, VA officials moved to snuff out proposed
legislation moving through Congress which would have made good on these
claims.

The VA won through a slippery maneuver - tacking an amendment banning the
war-smoking claims on a pork-barrel highway funding bill which sailed
through Congress. I don't like the underhanded method by which this was
done, but I do think it was the right decision.

I can't conclude that the federal government has encroached on my liberty
by allowing the tobacco companies to give away cigarettes to the troops.
Quite the opposite. Free cigarettes raining down on us enhanced our ability
to do the dirty job.

Smoking and war are deeply intertwined. Before a battle you smoke to calm
your nerves. After the battle you smoke in the face of grief. Between
battles you sit around with four or five other guys smoking and telling
dirty jokes and complaining about some arrogant lieutenant waving his
insane arms in your direction.

Most of the time there is no battle. You hump the hills for days without a
shot fired. You sit for long hours in the hot sun with nothing to do. So
hot you must have a smoke. Or maybe the monsoon rains just swept in. Aahhh,
how refreshing, the fiery tip giving off a little warmth in the midst of a
storm.

Now we are at peace and in need of an enemy. Thus a war on cigarettes, once
the ally of the soldier. To some extent a just war. The nicotine delivery
system is a nasty number.

The war on cigarettes is looking much like the war in Vietnam: long,
protracted, and in the end, likely a lost cause. Well, not quite. In the
'50s half the nation's adults puffed away. Today about one-quarter smoke.
An amazing victory, but not good enough for the zero-tolerance zealots
determined to extinguish every cigarette.

For them, it is total war.

Examiner contributor Bob Armstrong is the editor of Exotica, a San
Francisco monthly adult entertainment magazine. He served in Vietnam as a
photographer in the Third Marine Division.

1998 San Francisco Examiner Page A 23

Checked-by: Joel W. Johnson