Military-tobacco edit way off base

Regarding the Monday editorial, “Help military ban tobacco”: Militarily speaking; it seems your “In Our View” anti-smoking effort was off base. The editorial board’s view regarding state law is fair game. But the rambling arguments, quotes and purported facts in your editorial were disjointed and likely misleading to the average reader.

I’m retired military, I smoke. I agree; people should not smoke, and if they smoke, they should try to stop. But the headline “Help military ban tobacco” was not on point — the military shouldn’t, and probably couldn’t, ban smoking, any more than any other employer. Could The Herald enact such a ban? The military can prohibit sales consistent with state law. That makes sense, and I do not object. The military exchange systems have already enacted policies to ensure exchanges (not commissaries as the editorial indicates) sell tobacco products at prices equivalent to the local community. (Myself and other military people I know buy ours at a Native Organization operated outlet which are cheaper than the exchange anyway.)

The editorial was not specific in how much of the 2012 $125 million in exchange profits was from tobacco sales. But, exchange profits fund morale programs and services for the entire military population. Shopping at exchanges and commissaries is an important long-standing government-made promise of a non-pay benefit for active duty and retirees. Congress was absolutely “on target” in forbidding transient defense officials from cherry-picking what things they want to ban/sell in our exchanges. The editorial’s political pressure to ban any specific exchange sales, is as irritating and hypocritical to me, as the political pressure to prohibit bans likely was to your editorial’s author. Let the customers and the marketplace decide what sells, where, and for how much. For exchanges, the customers are those who earned that right/privilege through their service to our country.

John Miller

Marysville