MA:Arming vets in fight against smoking

Arming vets in fight against smoking
(By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff)

State to provide nicotine patches
By Stephen Smith
Globe Staff / November 18, 2008

There was, of course, the tin of beef stew. And the chewing gum and toilet paper, too, jammed inside the rations that sustained Warren Quinlan during his tour of duty in Vietnam. And, always, there were cigarettes, four of them, just enough to ignite a habit that would smolder for decades.

"When you're in combat and waiting and sitting around, if there's a cigarette there, that might ease a little bit of the tension," said Quinlan, now 61, who spent about a year and a half in Vietnam in the late 1960s. "So you puff away, and one leads to another, and here you are, 40 years later, and you're still smoking."

Until yesterday, when he became the public face of a state campaign to reduce smoking among military veterans by providing them with nicotine patches, at no cost.

To kick off the campaign, Quinlan bared his left arm, and the state's secretary of health and human services, Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, applied a nicotine-replacement patch. By calling a state-run hot line (800-879-8678), veterans and their families can receive a month's worth of patches, which retails for about $100, and a connection to telephone counseling.

There are thousands of others like Quinlan in the state, health authorities said. Officials said veterans use tobacco at a rate about 30 percent higher than Massachusetts adults overall.

About 18 percent of Bay State adults smoked regularly, according to figures from 2005 through 2007. The rate for veterans: 24 percent.
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