CNO: Smoking ban for subs in the works - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

CNO: Smoking ban for subs in the works

The smoking lamp will soon be out aboard all subs, according to the Navy's top officer.

"We're going to stop smoking on submarines," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead told Navy Times on March 23.

The move is not yet official, so Lt. Cmdr. Mark Jones, a spokesman for Submarine Force, would say only that Vice Adm. John Donnelly "is examining the options of changing the policy of smoking in a submarine to improve the overall health of the entire crew."

Jones would not speculate on when a decision will be made, but a final order likely will come soon. The catalyst for change is the effect of secondhand smoke on crew members who remain submerged for months at a time.

"That atmosphere moves around the submarine," Roughead said. "You don't smell it, but the damaging things from the smoke are still present."

The pending decision is rooted in a 2009 environmental tobacco smoke study ordered by Donnelly that showed nonsmokers on submarines had measurable exposure to the harmful agents found in secondhand smoke.

Roughead addressed the findings, and the forthcoming ban, with half of the Navy's guided- and ballistic-missile sub skippers March 23 at a Submarine Group 10 leadership call at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Ga. Though these Ohio-class subs will soon include women in their crews - a move that has captured national headlines — the smoking ban proved to be the hot topic of discussion.

"Someone said in the course of the discussion after the [health] tests [that] they realized they might as well have just smoked," Roughead said.

The Navy said it would not share the details of the 2009 study until a decision on the ban is made. A 2004 study to determine whether the forward or aft smoking areas minimized nonsmokers' exposure to environmental tobacco smoke said "passive smoke exposure appears to be minimum." The current study is likely to be more critical.

"We are able to discern what the health effects are better than in the past," Roughead said, without specifying the latest findings.

A July 2002 survey published by Military Medicine, a journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, provides insight into the attitudes of submariners about a possible ban. The anonymous Royal Navy survey, conducted on two of Britain's Trident submarines, found that nearly one-third of respondents were smokers; 45 percent of nonsmokers were ex-smokers. In response to the questionnaire, 55 percent said they felt a ban would be justifiable, 46 percent said it would be unfair and 42 percent said it was uncalled for.

Respondents to an anonymous survey of British ballistic-missile submariners in 2002 who said a smoking ban would be justifiable.