comparisons, and it also standardized civilian rates on sociodemographic characteristics so they would be comparable to the military population. Thus the civilian smoking rates shown in this table are not strictly comparable to the smoking rates shown in Figure 7-5.

Two important findings are revealed by the DoD study. First, there is almost no difference in cigarette smoking rates between military and civilian populations of comparable ages and gender. Second, there is a very substantial difference in smoking rates by age group, especially for men. Military men ages 18 to 24 are nearly twice as likely to smoke as those ages 25 to 55 (45 versus 24 percent, respectively). The age difference for women is less pronounced but still significant (30 versus 22 percent). The younger age group overlaps considerably with first-term enlistees, while the older age groups would be comprised primarily of career force members. It should be noted that the prevalence rates for nonsmokers in Table 7-3 are similar to the Army and Navy rates of nonsmokers among recruits discussed in the next section.

The military-civilian comparison discussed to this point has focused on any cigarette use in the past 30 days. The Monitoring the Future data