The high percentage of UK military personnel who smoke warrants urgent action, concludes a new study, which shows that the smoking rates increased even further while troops were deployed in Iraq. The study, which was based on a survey of some 600 army staff working in a field hospital in Iraq and is reported in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, found that some 34% of "regulars" smoked. This percentage considerably exceeds the government’s target to reduce the percentage of the whole population that smokes to 26% by 2005. The study shows that the percentage of smokers increased to 42% after the unit was deployed to Iraq and that only around one in three staff could remember having been given any health education about smoking during their military service.
Nanny alert! Snipped here. |