All Veterans Administration health facilities nationwide will officially become smoke-free as of October 1. VA officials in Massachusetts, however, say the policy will not be strictly enforced — for now.
Cigarettes have been a big part of military culture since World War I. But faced with rising tobacco-related health care costs, the military has tried to discourage smoking.
Andrew McMahon is acting director of the VA health care system in central and western Massachusetts. He said about 13 percent of the 8,000 veterans who use the main medical center in Northampton are smokers, and frequently visit the designated smoking shelters.
Andrew McMahon, VA: We have decided up here to keep our smoking shelters operational and approach the veterans in there – not with our police handing out tickets for smoking, but we're going to have our nurses and other liaisons from our staff just trying to encourage veterans to take advantage of our smoking cessation programs, and some of our other more healthy activities, like QiGong or yoga and mindfulness.
Kari Njiiri, NEPR: How are you going to convince them to do that?
This is a soft closing for us, so we're going to do our best to convince them. Of course, that's not going to work for everybody. But there is going to be a time at some future date where the smoking shelters will no longer exist, and we will just try to enforce – in an as nice and soft a way as we can – no smoking on the grounds.
This ban also applies to employees.
It does. So we have four unions on this campus. Three of them have agreed to the smoking ban, and one of them we are still in negotiation with. So they will really take effect in the end of December, we believe, as a target date for that negotiation.
So the ban for employees is going to be different. It's not going to commence on October 1?
We are not going to enforce it for anybody until the end of December. We are just trying to encourage people not to smoke in that time as we transition.
For both employees, as well as veterans?
That's correct.
What's been the reaction from folk?
Well, to me personally, they just ask how I think it's going to go. But I know there's some some grumbling there, and some people are going to be very hard to convince to adhere to the rule of "no smoking" on the campus.
And that's why we're really trying to take an outreach and soft approach. Our police are not going to be the ones engaging in the outreach; it's going to be clinical people. And we're going to really just try, from that approach, to be as cooperative and engaging as we can with these gentlemen and ladies.
Yeah, because this is quite a change of culture, no?
It is. It's a big change for us. And it's going to be a big effort on our part to see this through to a successful point, we believe.
What happens come January 1, and you still find people smoking? I mean, how long will the soft approach continue?
I think that this is going to take years to change a culture. I envision the soft approach for as long as we are going to target this population, and reduce the smoking population in veterans.
