Veterans smoke at higher rates than the general population, and the reasons are not hard to understand. Military culture has a long history with tobacco. Deployment increases smoking rates by more than 50%. Stress, sleep deprivation, boredom and the social dynamics of unit life push people toward cigarettes, and the habit follows them home. About one in five veterans currently use tobacco, and veterans are more likely than civilians to use every type of tobacco product, including the most harmful.
A new study from the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle suggests that the VA’s Whole Health program, a patient-centered model that incorporates complementary therapies alongside conventional medicine, is giving veterans an additional path to quitting. The results, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, are drawn from more than 37,000 veterans who smoked, making it one of the largest real-world evaluations of these approaches for tobacco cessation.
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What the Study Found
The researchers tracked veterans who participated in four types of Whole Health services: mindfulness meditation, acupuncture, clinical hypnosis and Whole Health coaching. Half of the 37,000 veterans in the study used at least one of these services. The other half, matched by demographics and health characteristics, received standard VA care without Whole Health participation. The primary outcome was sustained tobacco cessation at 13 months.
- Meditation. Veterans who engaged in mindfulness meditation were 25% more likely to achieve sustained cessation compared with matched veterans who did not use these services.
- Whole Health coaching. Veterans who used Whole Health coaching were 18% more likely to quit.
- Acupuncture. Veterans who used acupuncture were 14% more likely to quit.
- Clinical hypnosis. This showed a positive trend but did not reach statistical significance.
Meditation, clinical hypnosis and Whole Health coaching were also associated with higher use of cessation medications, suggesting that these services may make veterans more likely to engage with pharmacological quit aids as well.
Why This Matters for Veterans
Tobacco is the most preventable cause of death among veterans. It drives cardiovascular disease, multiple cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and a cascade of conditions that compound service-connected disabilities. For veterans already managing PTSD, chronic pain, or traumatic brain injury, smoking adds risk on top of risk. Traditional cessation programs that rely solely on medication and counseling work for some veterans, but quit rates remain stubbornly low in populations dealing with high stress and co-occurring mental health conditions.
What makes this study significant is scale and setting. These are not clinical trial results from a controlled environment. This is real-world data from more than 37,000 veterans using services that are already available at VA facilities. The Whole Health program is not experimental. It has been implemented across the VA system, and the complementary therapies in the study, including meditation, acupuncture and health coaching, are included in the VA medical benefits package when deemed clinically appropriate under VA Directive 1137.
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How to Access These Services
If you are a veteran enrolled in VA health care and you want to quit smoking, ask your primary care provider about Whole Health services at your facility. Many VA medical centers offer mindfulness meditation classes, acupuncture, health coaching and other complementary therapies as part of the Whole Health model.
The VA also operates a free telephone Quitline for any veteran enrolled in VA health care. Quit VET is staffed by trained counselors who can help you at any stage of quitting. The Quitline is open 6 a.m.-6 p.m. Pacific Time weekdays. You can also explore Whole Health resources online, including guided meditation, breathing exercises, tai chi and tobacco cessation tools, at VA.gov/WholeHealth.
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