Free Republic

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Most U.S. Navy medical personnel in the Pacific — military and civilian — will be banned from smoking or chewing tobacco anywhere during duty hours and while in uniform, in accordance with a recent Navy instruction. Capt. Kevin Moore, commander of U.S. naval health care facilities in Japan, South Korea and Diego Garcia, said during a phone interview Friday that he and his staff are taking the instruction seriously and have begun enforcement. "I was once asked, ‘How can you call yourself a health care organization when you’re allowing people to kill themselves in front...

It was 1997, and the tobacco companies were on the ropes. Facing a rash of lawsuits from state attorneys general seeking billions of dollars in reimbursement for what they claimed were the Medicaid costs of smoking-related diseases, the companies were about to agree to an unprecedented settlement with the states. Under that settlement, the major tobacco companies would pay the states more than $200 billion, accept sweeping restrictions on cigarette advertising and pay $1.5 billion for an antismoking campaign. While very few editorialists had much sympathy for the tobacco companies, many wondered what kind of precedents these lawsuits would...