Someone, please correct me if I’m wrong, but for a long time, didn’t each box of C-rations contain a couple Camels?
Pragmatically, perhaps if you’re in deep enough trouble to require an emergency ration box it would not, for the sake of an extra gram of mass, be a good idea to force an already panicked person through the rigours of nicotine withdrawal.
Plus, I believe they are an excellent way of locating you in underground caverns.
I don’t know - why don’t people who smoke take more responsibility for people smoking?
However, this page contains some inforamtion on the subject of your question. In short, yes: military rations contained cigarettes at one time
What does it mean to “take more blame” for something?
The Surgeon-General’s reports and so on started surfacing in the 60’s, although there is evidence that some of the tobacco companies stonewalled research for a couple decades. Certainly, the seriousness of the health risks from smoking were not widely appreciated before the 50’s. From the vantage point of WWII C-ration packagers, they probably figured it was no worse than coffee or a chocolate bar. That said, the Army apparently continued to issue them until the 80’s. Put that down to inertia, probably.
Besides, no matter what, they’ve changed their policies dramatically since then. When my mom’s husband was in AF basic, a lot of people took up smoking, because you got smoke breaks while the nonsmokers had to stay at attention during your breaks. You were being punished for not smoking, more or less, and it was really unfair. I forget who, but there’s at least one Doper whose husband started this way.
Nowadays they don’t let you smoke in basic at all. Beyond that, I’m sure it’s very highly discouraged.
In the mid-90s, the Veterans Administration found that the laws on compensation for veterans disabilities would include nicotine addiction resulting from cigarettes being issued to troops. The potential cost to the government was estimated to be huge: tens of billions of dollars would need to be given to the VA health care system if veterans could claim that the military gave them lung cancer, just like veterans can claim that the military got them shot up in a war.
Congress in 1998 enacted, as part of a transportation bill, a restriction on claiming tobacco related illnesses as a service connected disability. The thinking was that a person choosing to start smoking while in the service should not be compensated in the same way that someone gets compensated for being wounded in war or injured during training.
In short, Congress gave more weight to the claim that many veterans made a poor choice in starting smoking, rather than concede that the government should be held liable for the military’s alleged coersion of troops to start smoking.
Some might consider cigarettes to be a form of currency. They’re certainly tradeable, either with your own forces or potentially with the local populace.
This is anecdotal, but smoking can also help you stay awake. My brother smoked all through Basic, RIP, Airborne and Ranger School, when he had the chance. There was almost a rebellion at RS when the decision was made to prohibit smoking.
Which army? The army that lined up troops in trenches and exposed them to above ground nuclear explosions? The army that that laced some poor saps’ drinks with LSD and without informed consent? The army that forced hundreds of thousands of soldiers to be guinea pigs for experimental vaccines?
Oh, yes – you DO mean that army, the American one. What was your question again?
The Army added cigarettes to the rations as a reaction to the marked loss of morale the troops suffered in WWI when they didn’t have smokes.
Let me qualify this as a fact acquired from The History Channel, so accuracy is dubious at best.
Boyo Jim: you forgot about depleted uranium, which is used as armor for the Abrams tank and in armor-piercing shells and bombs. It’s still slightly radioactive, but they promise everyone that it’s not enough to cause harm.
Still, I’ve read about studies conducted by veterans’ groups which show that military personel who are exposed to DU have higher than normal rates of leukemia and cancer. There’s a movement in the international community to ban the stuff.
If it is any help it was the K-Rations that included cigarettes. Usually they were (and this was in 1965) Green Circle Luck Strikes that were probably 20 years old when they were thrown off the truck. God alone knows where they had been since 1945. Sometimes it was Chesterfields. In either case they were dry, nasty and harsh. The Three-in-One-Ration, three meals in one cardboard box, had a package of ten cigs. I think that the K-Ration had a package of three or five. I don’t remember cigarettes ever being included in C-Rations although there was a book of matches and the ubiquitous packet of GI toilet paper.
Few relied on ration cigarettes to meet their nicotine needs. A carton of Camel Shorts was $2.50 off the back of the PX truck. You could cram three packs into an M-14 ammo pouch and the whole carton into a gas mask carrier.