Want to cut $4 billion in defense spending? Give troops Zyns and vapes

With the national debt hitting $40 trillion, pressure is building for the federal government to identify spending cuts. In the coming weeks, we can expect to hear familiar refrains: Republicans need to agree to slash defense and farm-country spending; Democrats need to agree to slash government-funded healthcare and welfare spending. Knowing Washington, it’s unlikely either party will agree to big cuts. So the best hope of budget restraint will be trimming here and there that cumulatively add up to something significant.Buried in the House-passed defense authorization bill is a smart and fairly simple idea that could help: give the military the tools needed to test more ways to help service members quit smoking.Section 707 of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would allow the war secretary to establish a one-year pilot program for active-duty service members who smoke at least one combustible tobacco product per week. Participants could choose among counseling, nicotine gum, nicotine patches, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches, and heat-not-burn products. The secretary “may” establish the program. Congress isn’t ordering the Pentagon to hand out vapes or nicotine pouches. It’s giving the Department of War the authority to test them alongside existing cessation tools and report back on what works.This could have important financial upsides. In a 2015 congressional hearing, Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, then-surgeon general of the Army, testified that the War Department could be sustaining $4.5 billion or more in preventable healthcare costs as a result of smoking. That’s about 0.5% of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2026 budget request, so it’s not chump change. It’s also money being spent to treat avoidable human suffering sustained by America’s heroes: mouth and lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema, asthma, and chronic bronchitis.A Defense Health Agency analysis found that 18.4% of active-duty service members reported smoking cigarettes in the 2018 Health Related Behaviors Survey, compared with 13.7% of the general U.S. population. Among those ages 17 to 24, 23.1% reported smoking cigarettes, compared with 7.8% of similarly aged civilians. That means our service members are at far greater risk than the rest of us from smoking-related illnesses.“The problem is quitting is hard,” Dr. Ray Niaura, a tobacco-control researcher at New York University, told me. “There’s no magic bullet, and we’re always looking for better ways to help people along.”Increasingly, the evidence shows some of those alternatives may work better.An updated Cochrane review released this month examined 80 studies involving nearly 30,000 smokers. Researchers found high-certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes increased quit rates compared with traditional nicotine replacement therapy, including patches and gum — and by 59%, not some piddly percentage.Last year, Rutgers University found that nicotine pouches, a newer product that the Food and Drug Administration under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump has found less harmful than smoking, help smokers quit. Studies at Yale and NYU have shown the same. Dr. Brad Rodu, a professor of medicine at the University of Louisville who has studied tobacco harm reduction for decades, pointed me to the new Cochrane findings when I asked him about the Pentagon proposal.“The evidence keeps building for e-cigarettes,” Rodu said.Niaura said, “Because pouches are fairly popular, it kind of makes sense to try them out and see what happens.”Nicotine is addictive. But the FDA says cigarettes are at the most harmful end of what the agency calls a continuum of risk because they burn tobacco. Cigarette smoke exposes users to thousands of chemicals that cause the serious diseases associated with smoking. Noncombustible products generally carry lower health risks.That doesn’t make e-cigarettes — or pouches — harmless. But Section 707 is aimed specifically at active-duty service members who already smoke.Rodu describes the War Department’s historical approach to lower-risk tobacco and nicotine products as “prohibition-oriented” and has documented his attempts to challenge military messaging about their relative risks going back nearly a decade. He calls the proposed pilot “a huge step in the right direction for DoD.”Unfortunately, Section 707 isn’t guaranteed to survive.FIRST JUUL, NOW ZYN: NEW YORK IS PUNISHING THE GENERATION THAT QUIT SMOKINGThe House passed H.R. 8800 in July, but the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version contains no comparable provision. The language will have to be in place before the Pentagon can begin testing.With luck, the Senate will see reason here. America’s service members and our own public finances are counting on it.Andrea Ruth is a writer and operations professional with a background in journalism and public policy. She lives in Florida.