By Kathryn E Monsey, LCSW, LCDC
If you have served in the military—or spent any real time on a military installation—you know the smoke pit. Usually tucked just far enough away from the building to satisfy policy, it has long doubled as an unofficial gathering place. Smoke a cigarette, catch up with someone, get five minutes away from work. For generations of service members, nicotine has been woven into military culture in ways that extend well beyond the cigarette itself.
But nicotine use in the military is starting to look different.
A recent Military Health System analysis of more than 921,000 active-component service members found that 22% reported using a nicotine or tobacco product within the previous 30 days. What caught my attention wasn't just the prevalence, it’s was what they were using. E- cigarettes were reported more than twice as often as cigarettes or chewing tobacco (Rossi et al., 2026).
Then there are nicotine pouches. A study of nearly 2,000 soldiers at Fort Liberty found that almost 24% reported using nicotine pouches within the previous 30 days. Among soldiers ages 17–24, that climbed to nearly 27% (Little et al., 2024).
Those numbers got me thinking less about nicotine itself and more about how the experience of using nicotine has changed.
Cigarettes come with friction. You need to step away. You need somewhere you're allowed to smoke. There's smoke, smell, and a pretty obvious signal to everyone around you about what you've been doing. And as cigarette smoking has become less socially accepted in the broader population, those inconveniences have become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Military culture has always been a little different. Smoking and dipping have maintained a visible presence in military life, and the smoke pit itself became something of a social institution. Nicotine had a place to go—and usually some company waiting there.
Vapes and nicotine pouches change that equation. They're portable, easier to use, produce little or no lingering odor, and are considerably less conspicuous than lighting a cigarette. Nicotine use doesn't necessarily require the same interruption or announce itself in quite the same way.
That raises an interesting question: When nicotine becomes easier to use and less conspicuous, do some of the natural barriers to using it disappear too?
We can't say that the discretion of newer products is driving increased use among service members. But it is worth considering as we try to understand why these products have gained traction, particularly among younger personnel.
There may also be something uniquely military about how this transition plays out. Nicotine has long traveled alongside stress, boredom, long shifts, deployments, downtime, and alcohol. New products don't necessarily change those functions. They may simply make nicotine easier to fit into everyday life.
For clinicians, this raises a more interesting question than simply whether a service member uses nicotine: What happens to a pattern of use when there are fewer reasons to stop? A cigarette comes with built-in boundaries—you have to step away, find a place to smoke, finish the cigarette, and return. Newer products can remove some of those natural stopping points. Nicotine can become easier to pair with drinking, driving, gaming, decompressing after work, or simply filling downtime. Over time, use that began in one specific context can quietly spread into many.
That makes it worth looking not only at frequency, but at how much space nicotine has started to occupy in someone's day. Is it still something they consciously decide to use, or has reaching for it become almost automatic? Are there still parts of the day when they naturally go without it? And when they do, what happens? As nicotine becomes easier to access and less conspicuous, dependence may not always announce itself through dramatic consequences. Sometimes the more telling shift is simply that there are fewer and fewer moments when nicotine isn't there.
The smoke pit isn't going anywhere tomorrow. Cigarettes and dip haven't disappeared either. But they no longer tell the whole story of nicotine use in the military.
As the products change, it's worth paying attention not only to what service members are using, but to how those products may be changing the way nicotine fits into military life.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of War.
References
Little, M. A., Polaskey, K. M., Pilehvari, A., Krukowski, R. A., Ribisl, K. M., & Pearce, T. D. (2024).
Nicotine pouch use among US military personnel. JAMA Network Open, 7(12), e2451517.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.51517
Rossi, K. R., Russell, S. J., & Mabila, S. L. (2026). Distribution of tobacco and nicotine use
indicators from the Periodic Health Assessment and medical diagnostic codes among U.S. active
component service members, 2023. Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, 33(4).