A little-noticed provision in a defence bill passed by the US House of Representatives would allow the Pentagon to test whether vapes, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco products can help active-duty troops stop smoking.
Section 707 of H.R. 8800, the National Defense Authorisation Act for fiscal year 2027, would place smoke-free nicotine products alongside counselling, nicotine gum and patches in a one-year smoking cessation pilot.
The wider defence bill passed the House by 216 votes to 212 on 22 July. It must still clear the Senate and be signed by the president before becoming law.
Who could take part?
The programme would be open to active-duty members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force who smoke at least one cigarette or another combustible tobacco product each week.
It wouldn’t launch automatically. If the provision becomes law, the secretary of defence would have the option of starting the pilot within 180 days.
The trial would have to operate in at least one branch of the armed forces and at one or more military installations where smoking rates exceed the national average. The legislation also targets bases with higher-than-average representation of Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Appalachian Americans.
Participants could be offered:
- counselling;
- nicotine gum;
- nicotine patches;
- vapes;
- nicotine pouches; and
- heated tobacco products.
Within a year of the programme ending, the Department of Defence would have to report to Congress on whether it helped troops stop smoking, which options appeared most effective and whether the scheme should be expanded, extended or made permanent.
The report would also examine gaps in healthcare services for service members from the population groups targeted by the pilot.
First federal test of smoke-free products
The inclusion of vapes, pouches and heated tobacco is significant because these products are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as smoking cessation medicines, although some have been authorised for sale as tobacco products.
The legislation would assess them as possible alternatives for people who already smoke, rather than treating them as established medical quit aids.
Writing on the Tobacco Harm Reduction 101 blog, founder and president Lindsey Stroud said: “The NDAA pilot program is a welcome effort to incorporate tobacco harm reduction into federal smoking-cessation policy.”
Stroud said it could become one of the first congressionally authorised federal programmes to evaluate vapes, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco specifically as part of a smoking cessation strategy for military personnel.
However, Section 707 does not set out a detailed research design. It doesn’t specify the number of participants, whether there would be a comparison group or how long service members would need to remain smoke-free to be counted as having quit.
It would therefore be a real-world Pentagon pilot rather than a conventional clinical trial.
Tobacco use remains a military health concern
More recent Department of Defence research underlines the scale of tobacco and nicotine use within the armed forces.
An April 2026 Military Health System study examined records from 921,394 active-duty service members who completed a health assessment in 2023.
It found that 22 per cent reported using a tobacco or nicotine product during the previous 30 days. When medical records containing tobacco or nicotine-related diagnoses were added, the estimate rose to 28.7 per cent.
Vapes were the most commonly reported product, used by 115,486 service members, while 47,325 reported smoking cigarettes. These figures cover all recent tobacco and nicotine use, so they are not directly comparable with the weekly smoking threshold proposed for the pilot.
Military researchers said smoking can reduce physical endurance, affect cognitive function and vision, slow recovery from injuries and increase the risk of respiratory infections, absence from work and problems with wound healing.
Lower health risks
The harm-reduction case for the pilot rests on the absence of combustion.
The FDA says cigarettes and other smoked tobacco products are the most harmful forms of tobacco, while non-combustible products such as vapes and smokeless tobacco generally carry lower health risks.
It also stresses that no tobacco product is safe and that smokers gain the full health benefit only when they switch completely away from cigarettes.
That distinction would be important in judging the military programme. A reduction in cigarette consumption, temporary abstinence and a complete switch to a smoke-free product would represent different outcomes.
The proposal is also some distance from implementation. The Senate Armed Services Committee has advanced its own version of the fiscal year 2027 defence bill, S. 4784, which is awaiting consideration by the full Senate. The House and Senate versions would then need to be reconciled, leaving Section 707 open to amendment or removal.
For now, the provision represents an attempt to gather evidence from a population in which smoking has long been recognised as a threat to health and military readiness. Whether it produces useful answers will depend on whether it survives the legislative process and how carefully the Pentagon designs the pilot.
