Image by: JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

A U.S. soldier smokes a cigarette in Afghanistan. Members of the armed forces are one-and-a-half times more likely to smoke than civilians.

The Five Percent Rule

From: Sally Herships
Length: 06:24

The military has failed to comply with its own tobacco pricing restrictions, selling millions of dollars of tobacco-based products to service members well beneath legal limits. As a result, the Department of Defense spends over $1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money a year on tobacco-related expenses. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: The Five Percent Rule
From: Sally Herships

20110601_military_tobacco_18_small The military has failed to comply with its own tobacco pricing restrictions, selling millions of dollars of tobacco-based products to service members well beneath legal limits. As a result, the Department of Defense spends over $1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money a year on tobacco-related expenses. Maybe it doesn’t have to.

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Piece Description

Broadcast History

Aired on Marketplace, 6/1/11.

Transcript

Sally Herships: Timothy Sterlachini is 40. He's got two kids and lives in Virginia. And he chews tobacco.

Herships: How long have you been chewing?

Timothy Sterlachini: For 14 years. I call it crack in a can.

Now, Sterlachini is a self-employed contractor, but he's been a Marine for 21 years. In 2003 he was a sergeant getting ready to drive into the Battle of Nasiriyah, one of the bloodiest in the Iraq War. About 75 feet away from him was a Humvee that had made out of Nasiriyah.

Sterlachini: Looked like they had taken five five-gallon buckets of blood and just thrown it all inside the vehicle and all around the vehicle.

Sterlachini was freaked out. He radioed his buddy, 12 vehicles back.

Sterlachini: Buckey Buckeye this is Zucchini, I need to speak to Echo Six Delta. And I was like Donahue make sure you take care of what you're supposed to take care of. Basically ou...
Read the full transcript

Intro and Outro

INTRO:

Brown tobacco leaves are costing the military a lot of green.

The Department of Defense spends over $1.5 billion a year of taxpayer money on tobacco related expenses. Members of the armed forces are 1.5 times more likely to smoke than civilians.

But an investigation by reporter Sally Herships shows the military regularly fails to comply with its own tobacco pricing restrictions. It sells millions of dollars of cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco at prices lower than the law allows.

OUTRO: