FEBRUARY 2004

Smoking and the Services

Many of you will have started smoking when you joined up, or having smoked before you joined the Forces increased the number of cigarettes etc that you smoked. This could have been due to a number of reasons such as the cheap, sometimes free tobacco ration, peer pressure – being one of the boys (or girls), and the stress of warfare. In recent years smoking related conditions have been given full consideration through the War Disablement Pensions system.

You can test your eligibility for a War Disablement Pension in relation to smoking associated illnesses. These can include: throat and mouth cancers, lung cancer, other lung problems such as emphysema; heart problems such as Ischaemic heart disease, carotid arterial disease, pulmonary thromboembolism, cerebral ischaemia/stroke, subarachnoid haemorrhage and various circulatory problems, acquired cataracts, type II diabetes, gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, gingivitis, bladder cancer, ulcerative colitis, Crohns Disease, macular degeneration, stomach cancer, Motor Neuron Disease and osteoporosis. This list is not exhaustive, but will give you a good idea of the areas of your life that smoking might have affected.

This is not to say that you will automatically receive a War Disablement Pension for any of these illnesses and conditions, some are much more difficult to link directly to smoking, especially if the onset of the condition happened many years after you stopped smoking. So please do not take this as a cast iron guarantee that your application will go through on the nod. However, my view is that if you don’t ask then you will never find out whether you would have been entitled or not.