Smoking & Nicotine

Another more detailed South Korean study shows that over 15% more of conscripts overall ever try smoking or become smokers. More than half of previous smokers smoked more during service. Almost thirty per cent of Koreans who entered the military without ever smoking began smoking when conscripted.  The responsibility for the disastrous result is a mixture of social norms and stress responses to military training. South Korea is a perfect study example since conscription is so widespread and widely enforced with 80-90% of men drafted, that it cannot be argued that the army simply has smokers self-select for military service.

In Finland conscription increased smoking, but mostly among those who smoked already.  In Norway 8% of non-smoking recruits gained a smoking habit, entering their mandatory service. 56% of those already smoking heavily increased their smoking during army service. Interestingly the study shows an important aspect of the problem, which is the widespread presence of passive smoking. 91% of conscripts reported that smoking occurred daily in their dormitories. Over 60% of non-smokers faced discomfort due to cigarette smoke presence in living quarters. Though the smoking culture has shifted away in the last decades from indoor smoking, the effects of passive smoking may still be present even outdoors, though now the escape from its effects may be somewhat easier for unwilling conscripts. Why do Norwegian soldiers smoke? Peer pressure (their closest friends have a high effect on their smoking habits) and dissatisfaction with military service. Clearly this is an effect of conscripting unwilling men. Norwegians are also in most cases taken out of the region they grew up in and placed in the desolate north, where soldiers can only partake in simple beer-drinking and dancing activities during their leisure time. Smoking creeps in at them on every occasion. 

Norway is particularly interesting because one would expect that since on average healthy young Norwegians smoke less than those with poor health, there would simply be a lower population of smokers in the army than in the normal population. And yet the reality is the opposite. The smoking rate was 10% higher than for civilians. Conscription manages to damage the health of the healthiest cohort of the population despite all the odds in their favour.

The reasons for the prevalence of tobacco during conscription come down to the very nature of mandatory military service.  Smoking is a release. A release activated by the environment inevitably created by the instrument in question. A military camp creates a “total institution”, sharing uncanny similarities with prison. The involuntary presence, the enforced uniformity, the anonymity, the subordination, the passivity create a dire need in men to assert themselves and fight boredom. The cigarette is the perfect object to cling to for that purpose. 

One is also forced to adhere to group norms and collective preferences. Smoking becomes one such preference, that no longer can be halted by individual values killed by the forced conformity. Military service detaches one from familiar surroundings and shakes up one’s freshly built adult identity. Attacks fresh conscripts with loneliness, insecurity and desperate search for identity. Smoking then gives one such desperately sought identity of adulthood, independence and masculinity.

One can also see an emergence of interesting patterns in conscript forces concerning alternative tobacco and nicotine products. In Finland conscripts not only shared cigarettes among each other but also snus (a type of smokeless tobacco product). As a 2010 study describes:

“The use of snus spread among those men, too, who had not taken snus prior to military service.”

The same story occurred in Norway. More than 30% of Norwegian soldiers use tobacco products, one of the highest numbers ever recorded in a Norwegian population. Civilians of the same age and gender would only use it in 13.6% of cases.