At the Tinker Air Force base in Oklahoma, Laura Crowder is known as “the Hawk Lady.”

She’s also known as “the Smoke Lady,” but not because she’s lighting cigarettes. Instead, Crowder is a health promotions manager at the base outside Oklahoma City, working to wean service members off tobacco in any form.

The numbers have improved since her arrival, she said, with tobacco use sliding from nearly 27 percent of the base population to a little under 18 percent.

Maybe that’s because “the Hawk Lady” knows where to go, even turning up to greet the night shift with her anti-tobacco efforts. She showed up at 8 p.m. to meet service members on duty. She showed up again at 3 a.m.

That got their attention.

“It was outside,” she said. “It was cold. It was dark.”

When she did it again, they were a little more ready to hear what she had to say.

Tinker isn't the only base that grapples with the issue. Every branch of the military struggles with tobacco use rates higher than those in the civilian world, especially in the young. Smoking cessation experts and researchers who have worked with and studied military men and women said studies show 20- and 30-somethings are the biggest tobacco users and weaning them off cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products is not as simple as tossing them a few packs of minty gum and offering nicotine patches.

Social pressures, job stress and a youthful sense of invincibility — the risk-taking type of personality that’s attracted to the military — clash with efforts to get them to tamp out their butts. Military culture also has a tobacco tradition that’s tough to crack. While overall smoking rates have dropped in the military by about half over the past 30 years, it will likely take a couple more decades to unravel the old ways completely, they said.