Veterans born between 1920 and 1939 who came back from World War II or the Korean War were more likely to die young than peers who weren’t veterans, and the culprit is tobacco, namely the cigarettes that the military distributed, say economists Kelly Bedard and Olivier Deschenes of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

“Our estimates suggest that 36% to 79% of the excess veteran deaths due to heart disease and lung cancer are attributable to military-induced smoking for veterans from the WWII and Korean War era,” they write in the current issue of the American Economic Review, a prestigious academic journal.

The military stopped providing cigarettes in rations in 1975, but tobacco products are still sold at subsidized prices on military bases. “(T)he military should reconsider their tobacco subsidy policies and design better programs to reduce smoking incidence among veterans,” the economists suggest. –David Wessel