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The brass at the Navy are considering a universal ban on cigarettes throughout naval and marine facilities. But lawmakers are pushing back against the effort saying that it violates the rights of servicemembers who smoke. Meanwhile, the military as a whole is looking for ways to fight the 30% smoking rate among enlisted individuals and the $930 million a year it spends on smoking-related illness.

This is not that uncommon an issue within the realm of smokers’ rights. One of the reasons mentally ill individuals contribute to around half the 400,000 deaths each year from smoking is that there is almost no way for doctors or caretakers to make them cut down on the habit without violating their rights. Similar issues exist in the military where many new enlistees are barely 18. If they don’t smoke already, they often do soon after joining.

You can read more on the story right here.

The tobacco industry has long known where its bottom line comes from. Fighting for “smokers’ rights” has allowed a culture of smoking to fester in the military, among the mentally ill, the homeless, and even among the extremely elderly. It’s made it almost impossible to prevent smoking at its core. And there is a fine line between making it difficult to engage in the act of smoking and violating the right of a smoker to smoke.

I’m not going to pretend to understand life on or within military facilities, but it seems in most cases there should be other ways to obtain cigarettes. Fighting against this sort of policy may be less about smokers’ rights and more about making sure the military gets a cut of the money enlisted personnel will spend on cigarettes regardless.

But this all raises a very interesting idea for the electronic cigarette industry — and the main point for which this is being written. If e-cigs do go the way of tobacco and regulators decide they are the same thing, then is it not possible that they could be the answer to treading the line between violating smokers’ rights and not giving them the tools with which to kill themselves?

This is already being tested out in more captive environments — prisons. Electronic cigarettes require no more supervision than providing inmates with matches or a lighter. And while e-cigs provide the nicotine, they don’t deal the death because they don’t serve up the smoke.

So while e-cigs might not be the first choice for all smokers, it is a choice — take it or leave it, the regulators might say.