- marketplace.org/topics/economy/maps-military-tobacco
- fivepercentrule.org/pxtobacco/?p=249
- fivepercentrule.org/pxtobacco/?p=161
Provide names of other journalists involved.
Stephanie Coleman
Lindsey Feinberg
Andrew Linderman
Andrew Parsons
Nadia Wilson
Sarah Wuchinich
List date(s) this work was published or aired.
June 1, 2011, Marketplace/NPR
June 9, 2011, BBC World Service
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
Soldiers smoke more than civilians. An independent, year-long, investigation by reporter Sally Herships has uncovered the military’s failure to comply with its own tobacco pricing restriction selling millions of dollars of tobacco products for well beneath legal limits. This broken restriction sickens soldiers and leaves tax payers with an enormous financial burden. The Department of Defense spends over 1.5 billion dollars on tobacco related expenses. Maybe it doesn’t have to. OBJECTIVE When Herships first began reporting the Five Percent Rule you could buy a pack of Marlboro reds at the military base at Fort Hamilton, NY, for 50% less than outside the gates. That’s a lot more than the legal discount mandated by the Department of Defense– only 5 percent. This illegal discounting of tobacco products by the military is a serious problem. When prices are cheap, people buy more, sickening service members and burdening tax payers with an enormous health care bill. Herships’ objective was to determine the depth of the military’s failed tobacco pricing restrictions and to measure its impact in terms of scope and healthcare costs.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The data that provided the foundation for this story didn’t come neatly packaged. Instead, to gather it, Herships used a FOIA request to extract tobacco pricing information from the military. She also requested and was eventually granted permission to make two base visits, to interview customers as they shopped for discounted tobacco. To get a hold of most of the data for the story Herships placed hundreds upon hundreds of phone calls– to over 100 military base stores to establish tobacco prices, to tax and municipal officials at the state and county level, across the country, to research pricing laws and restrictions for tobacco, researching nuances such as whether or not there was Indian reservations present in a certain vicinity and what the restrictions were for outside shoppers and how that in turn might affect pricing at a local Army or Air Force base. When pricing laws or tobacco guidelines in a state were absent multiple stores around each military base had to be called to establish pricing norms for tobacco in that area. This data was tracked and crunched entirely by Herships.
Explain types of human sources used.
Over the course of a year Herships spoke with multiple sources including at AAFES, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the organization within the military which establishes prices for tobacco, service members at different ranks (those in the front lines to higher ups) about their perceptions about tobacco and its potential health impacts, as well as their use of tobacco during and around military service. Herships interviewed experts in the specific field of military health who study: tobacco’s impacts on health and the financial health of service members, and tobacco researchers who study how pricing affects tobacco consumption, and the relationship between cigarette pricing and the distance smokers will travel to purchase it. Herships also spoke with the authors and editors of the Department of Defense commissioned report “Combating Tobacco in Military and Veteran Populations”, which details the financial and health impacts of tobacco use in the military. Interviews with many of these sources are included in the final piece.
Results:
In addition to creating public awareness about a costly, systematic problem affecting listeners, Herships’ story affected significant and measurable change. A few months after she began placing phone calls to the military NY’s Fort Hamilton base raised its prices by almost 50 percent. A year later they’re over 70% higher. Tobacco Free kids estimates the increase at Fort Hamilton alone will save the government over $52 million in health care costs over the lifetimes of the service members who quit tobacco because of the higher price. If Fort Hamilton continues to correct its tobacco pricing, keeping in line within DOD requirements, the health care savings will total more than $56 million. But Fort Hamilton is just one base. Herships’ investigation found lower than legal prices at bases in over a dozen states. Herships’ investigation also questioned and corrected two widely held misconceptions surrounding tobacco use: first, that tobacco use only has long-term health care consequences. As explained in the story, tobacco use impacts service-member’s fitness in the here and now, decreasing motor coordination, stamina and even wound healing. Second, many service members believe that tobacco relieves stress, when in reality, all it does is relieve the stress caused by addiction to nicotine. Service members who smoke are twice as likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress as non-smokers. On June first The Five Percent Rule aired on Marketplace. Eight days later it was picked up by the BBC World Service and went on to be awarded the 2011 Radio Impact award from the Third Coast Richard H. Driehaus competition and a Newswomen’s Club of NY’s Front Page Award. This was the reporter’s first investigation.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
N/A
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
This was Herships’ first investigative project. This story was sparked by her initial curiosity about seemingly unusually low prices for goods while accompanying a friend on a shopping trip at a Coast Guard Base. The same qualities journalists rely on for day to day reporting work also apply here: a spirit of inquisitiveness, determination and perseverance. Stay curious and don’t be afraid to question authority, however many times it takes to get the real answers you’re after.