Posted on: Monday, April 25, 2005

MILITARY UPDATE

By Tom Philpott

Recruits who enter service as heavy cigarette smokers are nearly twice as likely as non-smokers to leave the service early, mostly due to "substandard behavior," according to new research aimed at easing the U.S. military's high attrition rate.

For all its achievements over three decades, the volunteer military has had one chronic problem: an alarming washout rate. One-third of new entrants fail to complete initial service obligations, driving up recruiting and training costs.

The services long have used only two yardsticks to measure recruit quality: entrance test scores and a high school diploma. For example, even as the Army has failed in recent months to meet recruiting targets, it refuses to accept more than 10 percent of its recruits from applicants who dropped out of high school but passed a General Educational Development (graduation equivalency) test.

Now it appears pre-service smoking habits could be just as effective in predicting if a recruit will succeed in service, said Dr. Eli S. Flyer, a former senior manpower analyst with the Defense Department.

Flyer and Dr. Mark Eitelberg, a professor at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif., recently studied first-term attrition among 6,950 Navy recruits who entered service from February through May 2001. The recruits had filled out a questionnaire, detailing any past experiences with smoking, truancy, sleeping difficulties, discipline problems in school, alcohol and marijuana usage and other pre-service behaviors.

Among recruits who identified themselves as heavy smokers, saying they consumed a pack or more a day, 50 percent failed to complete their enlistment. Among light smokers, those smoking less than a pack daily, 37 percent left service early. Non-smokers had an attrition rate of 27 percent.

"High school misbehavior, criminal offenses, drug use, psychological difficulties and authority-related problems were all more prevalent among recruits with a smoking history than among non-smokers," the researchers concluded.

"The characteristics that go along with dropping out of school are the characteristics associated with being a youth smoker," Flyer said. Attrition among recruits who are both heavy smokers and high school dropouts is 75 percent.

There is significance too in how early a teen begins to smoke, Flyer said. The earlier they begin, the less successful they are likely to be in the service. That pattern also holds true for tattoos and body piercing, he said.

Smoking as a predictor of success in the military is less effective if the habit began in the service. In that case, smoking is more likely a consequence of job stress or of mimicking peers rather than resisting authority.

"That's a very different bird than a pre-service smoker," Flyer said.

While recruiting only non-smokers would lower attrition, Flyer said he believes it would be more effective to identify applicants who smoked heavily at some time.

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